Brian Moyer's Post "Explaining" his 50 Years.....(Long and Winded!!!)

Brian Moyer’s 50 year story….

This will be boring and long….. I have been probably thinking about this much more than others as I set up the BLOGs for this very thing….

Right after we graduated in June I set off for an adventure in South America. I had arranged for my freshman year to be at the Universidad Catolica del Peru in Lima. My aunt and uncle were in the Foreign Service and they found out about an exchange student program with Loyola Univ of Chicago so I applied and thought this would be a great opportunity for me to stay with them in Lima and attend the program. I got in and they were ready to take me. My classes were in Spanish (thank you Mr Delgado!) and I did better than I imagined. Months went by but It did not last….the Viet Nam War was ramping up and my uncle was called to duty in Saigon and they had to move ….. and so did I. I came home disappointed in finishing only one semester but saw Machu Picchu, northern Chile, Equador, Panama, and Mexico City. One major sight, however, was in a stopover in Miami where I left the airport due to an overnight wait and at a gas station I saw racism for the first time with “Colored Only” bathrooms/drinking fountains…..A real eye opener.

I came back to Berkeley to begin a joint UC Berkeley - San Francisco State program (both places – exhausting!) and watched the Free Speech Movement unfold and the campus riots cancel classes at both institutions – I lived on the Bay Bridge! While in college I lived at home and my best friend was a neighbor who went to Berkeley High and then UC Berkeley and we both became avid track cyclists with a lot of success in the 1000 m time trial and match sprint and we tried for the Olympic Team for Mexico City. He made the team – He was also much better than I and he set the American record for the 4000 m Pursuit at the Games. Graduation eventually happened and a dreams of the Olympics and of going to Dental School both collapsed (a downturn that eventually was the best thing to happen to me).

I moved in with Tim Turner just south of Sather Gate (Derby and Dana St) and with his brother Ken and several other guys and also went to graduate school at the Univ of San Francisco studying Toxicology of trace metals. The Lawrence Berkeley Lab (LBL) had a new opening for a trace metal chemist and I put graduate school on hold to take that position. I set up a trace metals laboratory for the Lab’s head Physician who was also a nuclear medicine scientist and I wound up working for him for 15 years. We grew to a team of 25+ scientists by 1977 doing nuclear imaging and my career expanded into particle physics, radiation injury, cancer therapy, MRI and nuclear imaging, Alzheimer’s , and even experiments on 5 Apollo missions (14 -17 and Apollo Soyuz).

While at LBL, I finished my Toxicology degree at USF and then started my Pharmacology doctorate at UCSF. Unfortunately, after 5 years and half way through my dissertation had to move on taking a second MS (too long a story here…maybe at the Reunion)…just know it did not stop my career. In 1986, I left LBL to the Biotech industry and went to Cetus Corp in Emeryville where I used nuclear imaging techniques to help move their biotech products to the FDA. In 1979 my wife Carol (a New Orleans girl) came into my life and we were married in 1981. Our first daughter, Lauren, came along in 1983. We lived in Oakland off of 35th Ave near Holy Names College. We moved to Alameda in 1986 and our second daughter, Alycia, arrived soon after. In the 1980’s I was also a runner (and was not too bad either!) and set up a road race – a 50 mile trail run relay called “The Double Danny” - in the Alamo-Walnut Creek area for a benefit for The Danny Foundation which was named for John and Rose Lineweaver’s son, Danny, who had a terrible crib accident.

In 1991, Cetus got bought out and I moved onto a company in Sunnyvale that was part of Nycomed (Oslo, Norway) in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). I was there for 6 months and got a call to join a new start-up out of Harvard and located in New Hampshire doing nuclear medicine product development and we moved to NH in 1992. The “World Series” earthquake and the Berkeley-Oakland fire a year later changed many lives who lost their homes. Seeing friends now living in other parts of the country we decided on a new life adventure and moved to Bedford, NH for the new job. NH has been a great place to have our kids grow up and the “First in the Nation” politics has been an amazing experience that I could write about with lots of stories. I became a Rotarian there and in 1996 I was the Speaker Chairman where I met all the Presidential candidates personally with breakfast speeches at our Club meetings.

The job in New Hampshire was a real adventure in small business and with a great group of people. My work was not possible at our NH facility so I had to go to New York City for labs and wound up at three hospitals (Mt Sinai, Sloane Kettering and NYU) from 1993-1996 and made career relationships that are rare in any career. Two drug approvals with that company (and now at 6 approvals) made my resume stand out. The company was bought in 1998 by Schering AG out of Berlin, Germany and so I was in Berlin frequently and lead several clinical trials in Europe and especially in Eastern Europe (Poland esp). In 2001 I left Diatide to work in Cambridge MA for a company called EPIX Medical making an MRI imaging agent for diagnosis of vascular injuries. That drug was approved and as the Product Program Manager and the lead Pharmacologist I went into the consulting business. I worked for a small nuclear medicine consulting company for a year and then got a call requesting I join a group of about 15 consultants in Washington for Health and Human Services (HHS) set up for advanced drug development of new drugs and vaccines for national threats (anthrax, pandemic flu, radiation, nerve agents, etc.

BARDA, aka Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, works for the Asst Secretary for Preparedness and we are partners with Homeland Security, the CDC, the FDA and the Dept of Defense to develop new drugs for the US response. I arrived in DC in January 2007 with my 20 year old daughter, Alycia, who had a law firm internship in DC and was going to live with me too!. Now seven years later our group has grown and I am contemplating my retirement. I have enjoyed immensely the work in Washington as it has been an incredible experience working with novel drugs , major and small start-up Pharma companies and some of the finest scientists I have ever had the privilege to work.

Carol and I do enjoy NH as well as Boston (60 mi away) and DC is a fun alternative life style. Alycia (26; and just got engaged) lives in Boston working for State Street and Lauren (30) now lives in Los Angeles (she was 9 when we moved and never lost her CA roots) and is a successful model and an aspiring actor. I am apparently good at photography and have a web site of my work. I remain an “active” Rotarian as the Race Director for the Bedford Club’s annual 12K/5K event (now for 18 years) which we turned into a major New England Race (and I do their web site too!

Some pictures: my family in Sonoma last year (Carol, Alycia, Lauren and me), John Lineweaver and Tim Turner at my wedding in 1981; my Rotary 12K road race start last year; the 1968 Olympic track cycling trials; Carol and I in France in 2012; the book cover of my recent imaging book.