On a windy November morning, Millennium Pharmaceuticals' managers are gathered around a small table at a cafe in downtown Cambridge, Mass., for their daily chat with Joe Bolen, Millennium's chief scientific officer. Bolen walks in just after 7 a.m. Most of his outfit is straightforward business casual: white shirt, blue jeans, and a brown corduroy jacket. It's the accents – snakeskin boots, tiny scorpions embroidered on the tips of his collar, and glasses that are a swirl of pink and orange – that give a nod to his renegade days spent touring in a band. He sets his glasses down by his coffee. "We solve all the problems of the world at this table," he says.
Today, the team is planning the first clinical trials of a compound called MLN4924 that takes a lesson from Velcade, the company's successful cancer drug. Velcade blocks the normal function of the proteasome, the ...
