Earning the Right to Grow

My career has always gravitated toward opportunities where scientific innovation challenges the status quo and has the potential to change the standard of care. That mindset is deeply embedded in the work we have done, and continue to do, at Kymera. In my recent conversation with co-founder and board member, Bruce Booth, we had the chance to go back to the earliest days of the company and reflect on the founding thesis that shaped what we set out to build. Targeted protein degradation was still an emerging idea, a novel technology at the time, and there was no established blueprint for synthesizing that science into a new therapeutic modality. However, we believed the opportunity in front of us was much bigger than a new modality. It was a chance to challenge traditional drug discovery from the ground up and forge a path toward medicines that could transform how diseases are treated. We wanted to be among the first to truly make that real and we felt the commitment and the responsibility to do so.

Ten years later, it is humbling to reflect on how many of those early decisions have weathered the test of time. The targets/pathways we chose, the R&D capabilities we built, the culture we nurtured, and the way we followed the data all became part of how Kymera earned the right to grow. We always had pure conviction, but conviction was never a substitute for proof points. It was, and remains, what keeps us committed to generating them, testing every assumption, asking hard questions, and continuing to build when the path is not yet clear.

I’m proud of how far we’ve come, but I am even more focused on the work still ahead. Our north star has never changed. I hope Bruce and I can sit down again in Kymera’s next decade and reflect on this journey through the lens that matters most, the patients whose lives we have changed with our innovation.

Nello Mainolfi, PhD
Founder, President and CEO
Kymera Therapeutics