The central lesson from the 1994 Oscar Award-winning movie, “Forrest Gump,” starring Tom Hanks as the title character, is “when in doubt, haul ass” (our words, not an actual quote lol). Forrest is constantly running — away from trouble and after his flighty childhood love interest, Jenny (or Jen-nayyy as Forrest says it in his slow Southern drawl), played by Robin Wright, as an adult, who he eventually marries. The most famous line in the movie is “Run, Forrest, Run!”, which Jen-nayyy prompts Forrest to do as a child when bullies chase him.
All of us that work at EpicentRx run too — and not just our mouths. We run to meetings, and we run to meet deadlines, regulatory requirements, time crunches, and enrollment quotas — although because of creaky knees and hips we prefer blogging to actual jogging. Drug development is a race — a mouse race more than a rat race, to be sure, since we preferentially use the former in several required preclinical experiments.
But even more so it is a race against time. With each day that passes the patent lives of our lead therapies, RRx-001 (nibrozetone) and AdAPT-001, tick away. To manufacture RRx-001 and AdAPT-001 takes time. The planning and execution clinical trials takes even longer — much longer. Also in a race against time are the unfortunate patients with end-stage disease that we propose to treat and who have no other options to fall back on.
So, for their sake, we better get it right. And we better do it fast.
This is the reason to constantly repeat, “Run, EpicentRx, Run!”
And to paraphrase Forrest, that’s all we have to say about that.