Brad Perkins, M.D., newly appointed CMO of Karius, has had his eyes on grand scientific achievements since childhood.
Brad Perkins, M.D., newly appointed CMO of Karius, has had his eyes on grand scientific achievements since childhood.
“When I was 10 years old, I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, and I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting,” he told BioSpace.
That propelled him, as a 14-year-old, to solo in gliders and, at 16, in power planes.
“The two things that have inspired me most are space flight and what humans have been able to accomplish in combating infectious diseases, such as the eradication of smallpox,” he said. “Infectious disease is ground zero of precision medicine.”
Advancing personalized medicine and, in doing so, transforming health care for patients throughout the world will be another fundamentally grand achievement for this century.
For that, Perkins is front and center. In 2001, he led the Center for Disease Control and Development’s (CDC’s) investigation of the anthrax attacks after 9/11.
“Up to that point, that was the largest and, arguably, most complex investigation the CDC had done. It put the CDC into a new national and global biosecurity role, working closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and national security organizations. We learned a lot,” he said.
Many of those learnings are relevant today, including the form of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which laid the foundation for governmental investment in COVID vaccines. “It’s a personal highlight for me to see the value carry over from that.”
Thinking about the COVID-19 pandemic, Perkins added, “It’s heartbreaking that we had so many warning signals about the potential for the coronaviruses to do what SARS-CoV-2 has done [and missed them].” The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) viruses each “strongly suggested the potential for pandemic occurrence.”
Looking forward, he emphasized the need “to invest early to be fully prepared for these events.” By that, Perkins means developing better diagnostic capabilities for routine use. “A large number of people with infectious diseases go undetected, and if you can’t diagnose all the infections you know are occurring, you can’t rapidly recognize new and emerging infectious disease threats.
“We’re at the tipping point where such technology is available,” he said. Karius, for example, is developing an assay that can detect different types of known pathogens (bacteria, DNA viruses, fungi and parasites) with a single blood test.
That capability, in fact, is what persuaded him to join Karius as CMO. “The government sector is built for stability, not agility. The private sector is the inverse of that,” Perkins said, emphasizing the need for both. By joining Karius, he is applying the knowledge of infectious diseases, vaccine and diagnostics development throughout the world that he gained at the CDC in a way that is, perhaps, more agile.
“As the global economy shifts to the value created by taking large-scale data and turning it into information, Karius—as I see it—is a leader. It has the potential to scale, like the work I did at the CDC.”
The company, since 2014, has worked to enable rapid diagnosis for infectious diseases using what’s called a liquid biopsy. This is a blood test that identifies more than 1,000 different microbial pathogens from the full spectrum of infectious disease. “We do that by analyzing microbial cell-free DNA.
“This will be a complete reset of clinical practice,” Perkins continued. “We were inspired to start with people with compromised immune systems—those with cancer, HIV and autoimmune diseases. They, in particular, have trouble with infectious disease, and their diseases are harder to diagnose than diseases in people with normal immune systems. That’s because the range of infections they can contract is much broader,” he pointed out.
“This technology is extraordinary compared to how testing is done today,” he said. In a way, it resembles the heady days of the 1960s space race and the palpable sense that anything was possible. “It really fulfills [fiction writer] Arthur C. Clarke’s adage that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ It’s stunning to think this moment has come.”
In a career with many highlights—ranging from leading the special bacteriology reference lab at the CDC, where he pioneered some of the early molecular tests for bacteria in clinical settings, and designing and operating the Health Nucleus precision medicine research platform with genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter—Perkins said his most important achievement was the development of a new generation of meningococcal vaccines that have now been broadly licensed and are in routine use around the world. “Scaling new science that has far-reaching health impacts is my driving force,” Perkins remarked.
That driving force, and 30 years’ experience in infectious disease, dovetails with what Karius is doing. From Karius’ perspective, Perkins suggests his experience with evidence generation in domestic and international settings was persuasive, along with his work at Human Longevity, Inc., with Venter.
The challenge now, for Perkins and for Karius, is to conduct the studies needed to advance Karius’ liquid biopsy with high quality and at scale to enable physicians to have confidence in changing their diagnostic practices to include the use of this new technology.
Success will mean not only noninvasively identifying multiple pathogens involved in an infection, but will make it possible for physicians to use highly directed antibiotic therapies to treat hospitalized patients. That, in turn, may reduce antibiotic use and thus reduce adverse events and, perhaps, begin to mitigate the problem of antibiotic resistance.
Throughout his career, Perkins’ focus has shifted from space to the very tangible realm of human medicine and a newer love, sailing. Now he spends relatively little time piloting aircraft, preferring to read a good nonfiction book or to sail off the coast of San Diego. Those waters, which were home to the America’s Cup races in 1988, 1992 and 1995, are what he calls the “best sailing in the world.”
One thing hasn’t changed, though—his belief in the transformative power of grand scientific achievements.
