New Zealand scientist Jilly Evans. Photo / Jason Oxenham
New Zealand scientist Jilly Evans. Photo / Jason Oxenham
She’s hardly a household name at home, but this Kiwi scientist’s drugs are improving lives around the world.
New Zealand scientist Jilly Evans will have you believe it was luck that made her one of the world's leading researchers in the development of therapies for cancer and arthritis.
She will also have you believe it was luck that enabled her to develop three drugs for the treatment of diseases such as cystic fibrosis and asthma.
And it was more luck that helped her co-found two pharmaceutical companies and lead them to success.
Along the way, all that luck also helped her become one Kiwi rich-lister you probably haven't heard of.
"I tend to think I am a bit lucky in projects," she says. "Somebody famous said 'the harder I work, the luckier I get'. I have always enjoyed what I do, but I guess I have been a bit lucky.
"For a drug scientist, it is considered a big success if you are involved with one drug through your 35-year career. I have had three so far, and I am hoping for one more from our little company."
Evans is a relatively unknown figure in New Zealand despite her many successes.
Born in Paparoa, Northland, she grew up in a handful of small New Zealand towns in the 1950s and 60s, moving from place to place with her parents, sister and brother.
"I had fabulous science teachers all the way through my schooling," Evans says. "But I really didn't think I was going to be a scientist until probably sixth form chemistry."
It was then that she became inspired by a teacher after he built a 2m model of the DNA double helix.
"He copied it out of the Scientific American, so [it had] all the correct helical shape of DNA, and although I wasn't a biochemist at that point, I knew this was really important.
"Right there and then, I knew I wanted to know more about the chemistry of life."
Evans went on to attend the University of Auckland, before going to the University of British Columbia to complete her PhD. She then continued her postdoctoral studies in biochemistry at McGill university in Montreal, Canada.
It was at McGill that Evans met her husband of 38 years, Bill, who has always supported her "100 per cent".
"Whenever I got lack of confidence - it's a whole room of males , because scientists are usually males - he would say 'go in there, you are better than any of them, knock 'em dead'."
Not only did she find a lifelong partner at McGill, but it also gave her the start to her long career in pharmaceuticals.
"There was a notice on the noticeboard asking for an industrial pharmaceutical postdoctorate position, so I applied for it, got it, and then started my career in pharmaceuticals.
"The field of pharmaceuticals really suits me because I am a very extrovert scientist. I like communicating science and project development and I like the fact that you work as a team. It is very much a team thing to develop a drug and it takes a very long time."
What followed was a 21-year career at pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. During that time Evans made a name for herself with a string of successful drugs, the most outstanding of which was an anti-asthma drug called Singulair.
New Zealand scientist Jilly Evans. Photo / Jason Oxenham
"It is useful in about 30 per cent of asthmatics so it is not like most drugs, it doesn't work for everybody, but it has a nice place in therapy for asthma and it is something I am really proud of."
Following Singulair, Merck went on to name Evans as one of their lead inventors.
In 2005 Evans and two colleagues created a biopharm company called Amira Pharmaceuticals and began developing anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic therapies.
In 2011 the company was sold to Bristol-Myers Squibb, earning more than US$400 million for its founders and other shareholders.
Evans then co-founded another company called PharmAkea, named because the kea "is a noisy, inquisitive and intelligent New Zealand bird", much like the scientist herself.
The company is part of a global pharmaceuticals market that the World Health Organisation says is worth US$300 billion a year.
She is now chief scientific officer for PharmAkea, which focuses on developing anti-fibrotics - drugs that prevent the formation of excess fibrous tissue. They are used mainly for treating lung and liver disease.
Evans has also invested in New Zealand company Breathe Easy, which is developing tools to fight cystic fibrosis. She says she became involved with the company after meeting co-founder Brent Ogilvie, who was in San Diego looking for support to start the company.
"The thing that drove me [to invest] mostly was the people involved," says Evans.
"Professor Bob Elliot, who is in his late 80s now, I have always admired him from afar, but ... he is the key person behind the discovery.
"The chief executive [of the company] is also the mother of a cystic-fibrotic daughter. I am very given to orphan diseases where there is a parent who gets involved deeply and understands the diseases and then wants to do something for a child who is going to die early.
"It rang a bell with me and made me want to get involved."
Breathe Easy has begun the first early stage trial of its cystic fibrosis therapy, Citramel.
"When I was a little girl, people with cystic fibrosis died around the age of five. Now, through therapies, I think the age now is mid 30s or 40s, but that is still a shortened life, so if this product could improve quality of life and quantity, that is the aim."
The development process was not easy, Evans says, but it is worth it.
"Drug development is very very frustrating. The number of failures is high, over and over you are failing."
But knowing the good you can do makes it worthwhile.
Evans was awarded an Auckland University 2013 Distinguished Alumni award, and the Kea Biotechnologist of the Year Award in 2011.
She often travels back to New Zealand to visit her mother and to lend her expertise to the commercialisation of the New Zealand biopharmaceutical industry.
Q&A
Biggest success?
Singulair. I feel, gosh, I was part of something that, for some asthmatics, has been hugely beneficial. That is something I am very proud of.
Best advice you have? I always like to say, if you have had a great teacher, take the time to acknowledge them and tell them how great they were, because it is something so special in your life.
I love San Diego and I have my two little granddaughters there. I miss New Zealand, but I am very happy in America. I have a lovely husband, I have two nice sons and two nice daughters-in-law. I do love New Zealand, though. I always stay at an Orewa beachfront motel when I come back and I look out at the ocean and there is a huge pohutukawa tree there which is just so New Zealand.
