PROFILES

Stanley Crooke on making sense of antisense

Lisa M. Jarvis
C&EN Chicago
C&EN, 2019, 97 (18), pp 20–24May 6, 2019

Abstract

Abstract Image

Ask anyone to describe Stanley Crooke, CEO of Ionis Pharmaceuticals, and a single word comes up again and again: intense. Friends and adversaries alike say he operates at an intellectual pace, as both a scientist and a leader, that makes him something of a force of nature. Keep up, or be swept aside. It took a force of nature to tunnel through the mountain of challenges that defined antisense oligonucleotides, the technology to which Crooke has devoted his career. In 1989, Crooke set out to build a company that would make drugs out of antisense oligonucleotides: short, single-stranded RNAs that bind to messenger RNA to control protein production. Since then, the technology—and sometimes Crooke himself—has been the subject of withering criticism and downright dismissal. During the darkest years, both the science and the man inspired polar reactions: love or hate, with little in between. Today, the controversy has faded. The