James Bradner

Executive Vice President of Research & Development, Amgen

Search every verified James Bradner interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. James Bradner, then president of the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, delivered a keynote address at the 2021 UMass Boston–Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Annual Cancer Symposium. During the talk, he discussed the development of KRAS G12C inhibitors, noting that a "blueprint" published by a UCSF professor led to molecules that bind to the cysteine 12 residue of the G12C mutant. He described a patient who received three months of a G12C therapy from Amgen and stated that combining a G12C inhibitor with a SHP2 inhibitor showed "true synergy" in killing cancer cells. Bradner also emphasized the need for small, nimble teams to "violate the dogma of science" and advocated for diversity and inclusivity in research, saying "the science demands" it. In a 2011 TED Talk, Bradner described his lab's open-source approach to cancer research, in which they published the chemical identity of a prototype compound (JQ1) and mailed samples to 40 labs. He noted that leukemia cells treated with the compound turned into normal white blood cells and that mice with multiple myeloma responded to the drug. Bradner characterized the effort as a "social experiment" in openness and crowdsourcing, funded by the public and foundations, and stated that the molecule would be developed by a start-up called Tensha Therapeutics.