© 2024 Corcept Therapeutics, Incorporated
The journey to founding Corcept Therapeutics was one filled with unexpected turns – and it shows how following your passion can lead to new and undiscovered paths.
The Beginning: Four Gray Suits and One Big Idea
The idea for Corcept began to form when our Chief Executive Officer, Joseph K. Belanoff. M.D, was in his psychiatric residency at Stanford University. Dr. Belanoff’s research, in collaboration with Alan F. Schatzberg, the Chairman of Stanford’s Department of Psychiatry, led to important intellectual property covering new uses for an emerging class of medication. He felt that if these patents were licensed to an existing pharmaceutical company, this intellectual property had a good chance of sitting on a shelf for years without making any real impact on patient care. Equipped with a Wall Street background, he dusted off the four gray suits in his closet and set out to seek funding from venture capitalists to establish a biotech business.
“I never thought I would return to doing business again once I had gotten into medical school. However, I had the perhaps grandiose thought that our intellectual property was quite valuable, and I was eager to see how it would develop.”
Discovering the Effects of Cortisol – On the Brain and Beyond
From the very early days of Corcept, which was founded in 1998, Dr. Belanoff believed in the potential of a cortisol modulation pipeline. As a psychiatrist, he was initially interested in cortisol’s effects on the brain, but he quickly learned that cortisol plays a key role everywhere in the body, and it can affect many different diseases.
Innovation Fueled by Academic Collaboration
As a brand new company still raising money, Dr. Belanoff had to think creatively to accelerate the discovery of cortisol modulation as a tool to treat serious diseases. He decided to do something unusual for biotech companies – to extensively collaborate with academic-based investigators in and outside the United States who shared his interest in cortisol modulation. This collaborative model is still the foundation of Corcept’s pipeline and innovation.
These partnerships brought Corcept closer to changing the world of medicine.
“There are many specific moments that helped shape – and continue to shape – the Corcept success story. For instance, clinical investigators at the University of Chicago developed the idea that cortisol modulation could be useful in oncology. Scientists at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands figured out that one of our compounds had a specific effect on fatty liver disease that they’d never seen before. A very experienced pre-clinical researcher at the University of Buenos Aries in Argentina found that another of our compounds had unique positive properties in an animal model of ALS. So, there have been specific milestones along the way, but it’s all been part of the broader context that this is a very rich field and there is and will be much to be discovered.”
To this day, Dr. Belanoff fosters a unique environment for Corcept’s academic collaborators. Because his mission is to advance the understanding of cortisol modulation, he requires researchers to publish all their data, regardless of whether their studies have positive, negative, or mixed outcomes.
“The only way for the field to optimally advance is for everyone to see all the information that is available. Life is short for many of our patients – positive pathways need to be amplified but, equally important, scarce resources are best not spent rewalking down unproductive pathways.”
On the Horizon: The Ripple of Scientific Truth Unleashes a Sea Change of Discovery
Pinpointing what Dr. Belanoff finds most exciting about Corcept’s future is akin to picking his favorite child—it’s an impossible decision. “What’s on the horizon for Corcept is to continue to pursue the science. We’re just data-driven. We have many investigators pursuing many different things. We have created a sustainable farm system to encourage innovation, partnership, and productivity, all to uncover insights for the patients that need it most,” said Dr. Belanoff.