A chemistry “genius” whose work led to better ways of preventing people from dying of low blood pressure will be the next president of The Scripps Research Institute, one of the pillars of the county’s biomedical industry.
Michael Marletta, chair of chemistry at UC Berkeley, will replace Richard Lerner, who has led the institute for 25 years. Scripps Research has tripled in size during that time and pulls in more than $330 million a year for research.
Marletta, 60, was named president-elect on Sunday by the board of trustees. He will join the faculty in July and take command next January, guiding the private, non-profit institute at a difficult time. Scripps Research gets most of its money from the National Institutes of Health, which faces on-going pressure to sharply cut its budget.
The federal money enables Scripps Research to operate campuses in La Jolla and in Jupiter, Fla. that collectively employ 3,000 people. The La Jolla site alone has more than one million square feet of laboratory space.
Marletta said on Sunday he’s taking the job because “Scripps is a unique institution which, like my own work, focuses on biomedical research. I was in a broad-based department at Berkeley which didn’t have that same focus.
“We like to make great discoveries and to have them become applicable to human health, and to justify the support we get from taxpayers.”
Lerner,72, said he’s stepping down as president “because I think 25 years is long enough in that job, and I want to spend more time with my experiments.” (Biography)
The Chicago-born Lerner is an internationally-known chemist whose basic research on antibodies led to the development of adalimumab, a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Other aspects of his work are being used to help treat people with cancer and hepatitis C.
Marletta’s research also has had a direct impact on human health. His decades-long exploration of molecules led to an improved way of treating septic shock, a condition that can lead to fatal episodes of low blood pressure.
Marletta’s interest in science dates to October 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth.
“I was only six, but I have some memory of that time,” Marletta said, who grew up in upstate New York. “We lived in a small house. I jumped out of a window and went out on the lawn and watched Sputnik fly overhead. My mother later came out and found me sleeping there.
“Ever since then I’ve been captivated by science. But my interest went more into chemistry and biology than flying around the moon.”
Marletta focuses on the basic nature of biology and chemistry, and how the two world’s intersect and interact to affect human health. He’s worked at some of the country’s top research institutions, including UC San Francisco, MIT, Michigan and Berkeley.
In 1995, he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation grant, which is popularly known as a ‘genius’ grant because it goes to people who exhibit extraordinary creativity and promise.