SARANAC LAKE – Trudeau Institute has a new president and director.

Atsuo Kuki has a background in biotechnology entrepreneurship, the pharmaceutical industry and government-backed research, and he promises to lead Trudeau’s transformation into a hub for applied research of infectious diseases. Until now, the institute has largely done basic research into how diseases work and how a body fights them.

“If we can pull this off, it will be like, in my opinion, what Frank Trudeau Jr. did in 1964,” Kuki said. “It’s a major change.”

Dr. Francis Trudeau Jr. created the institute from the demise of the village’s pioneering tuberculosis sanitarium that his grandfather, Dr. E.L. Trudeau, founded in 1884. The institute established a reputation as a world-renowned nonprofit research facility that specializes in infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

But Kuki, whose last name is pronounced like the word “cookie,” is taking over an institute that is now a shell of its former self. Over the last six years, it’s lost nearly all its well-funded faculty in the wake of failed attempt to relocate the institute in 2010 and a shift in the federal research funding climate toward applied research, developing drugs to treat diseases. The institute had 130 employees about six years ago; today its workforce totals 48. In 2007, the institute’s researchers were awarded $11.4 million in National Institute of Health grant funds for 34 projects. This year, the institute has just one active NIH grant, totaling $243,000.

Since 2013, Trudeau’s operations have been propped up by millions of dollars from state taxpayers, handed out by Gov. Andrew Cuomo as part of a partnership with Clarkson University that’s still in its early stages.

In an interview this week, Kuki was quick to acknowledge what he called Trudeau’s “downturn,” but he said he believes the institute’s new plan will make it self-sustaining and profitable in the long run.

Arrival

Trudeau has been without a permanent president and director since the departure of Ronald Goldfarb last fall. Kuki arrived in December as a consultant and the institute’s chief scientific officer. He was tasked with spearheading the partnership with Clarkson, now called the Clarkson University and Trudeau Center for Immuno-engineering and Infectious Disease. He was hired in June as Trudeau’s president and director, but the institute’s board didn’t announce it until this week.

A native of Chicago, Kuki said he helped launch a biotech start-up in La Jolla, California, in the mid 1990s, leading an advanced technology department in drug discovery. The company was later acquired by Pfizer, which Kuki said gave him the experience of working for “big pharma” and working in clinical drug trials. Most recently, he worked on a government research contract at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research in Maryland.

Kuki said he was drawn to Trudeau by its history and reputation.

“They have a significant momentum in history and a lot of power here to make a difference to improve global health, but the institute has gone through a downturn with the loss of key faculty,” he said.

Transformation

Around the time Kuki arrived in Saranac Lake, Trudeau was dealt another blow when the North Country failed to win one of Cuomo’s $500 million Upstate Revitalization Initiative packages. The institute had sought $34 million to recruit new scientists and research teams.

Kuki said he’s realized that the path forward for Trudeau is not to bank on hiring “academic big shots.

“The academic big shots left, and they left because they were recruited by others who have deep pockets and gave them really big packages to move their laboratories to major metropolises that offer more biomedical advantages,” he said.

“We’re launching a transformation of Trudeau. It means that we stay absolutely with immunology and infectious diseases, but we’ll work much more on the applied side, much more on the translational science side, and in order to do that we’ll have to work with clinical partners. We cannot be alone, and we have to have a different kind of network. I think it’s going to be very, very exciting for us.”

Kuki also said he wants to use the expertise of Trudeau’s remaining researchers, who he said may not have “fancy-pants names” but did much of the legwork for Trudeau’s bigger-name scientists who have left.

“We’re redeploying them in different kinds of teams,” he said. “So we have strengths; we have a plan. It’s in the early days, so I look forward to when we have great things to announce, but if it goes in the direction I think, it will truly be a transformation.”

Support

Lee Keet, a financier and former Trudeau board member who lives in Saranac Lake, said he entertained Kuki and his wife over a couple of days when the institute was recruiting him.

“I believe he’s super-qualified for the job,” Keet said. “He’s been in both the commercial side of research and the basic research. Right now, I think the institute’s plan and need is to do more collaboration, more translational science, which leads to vaccines and new drugs.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the Trudeau-Clarkson partnership in November 2013, billing it as a “world-class” biotechnology research and development collaboration. The state committed $35 million to it over five years, $25 million of which was to stabilize Trudeau’s operations. Its latest payout, totaling $7.25 million, was made last month.

Chuck Thorpe, Clarkson’s senior vice president and provost, said the initial partnership “generated a lot of excitement,” but it’s still getting off the ground.

“We’ve been trying to figure out which directions that excitement can really get good solid funding and take off and mature, and that’s part of what Atsuo brings to the table,” Thorpe said. “He really understands how to take ideas out of the lab and find value for them, either with big pharma or entrepreneurial start-up companies.

“We continue to have a lot of excitement. We continue to have students go back and forth between the campuses. We continue to have faculty who are doing collaboration. Now we have the chance to sort of help design the collaboration in ways that make the most sense for all of us.”

Going forward

The institute’s most recent financial report, for 2015, shows state funding accounting for more than 70 percent of its revenue. It received $7.7 million last year from Empire State Development, the state’s economic development agency, and had overall revenue of $10.6 million. The rest came largely from government and private research grants.

Asked if Trudeau will continue to need large state grants to keep operating in the future, Kuki said the goal is to be self-sustaining.

“I took this job knowing it’s not easy to turn on a new operating model,” he said. “It will take us time, and we will need strong support in order to make this transition.

“Our job is supposed to be as an anchor, and to help other entities around us create new jobs. I believe the state will get quite a good payout from our becoming stronger again. We’re right now at the minimum in population and staff. We’re just on the path to climb out. In the long-term future, we do not believe we should need New York state economic development (funding) on an annual basis, but right now it’s really important for us.”