It was as a chemist-turned-vice-president at Merck Research Laboratories that Reider helped change how pharmaceutical companies conduct research and expedite development of promising new medicines.
His research team synthesized and helped deliver to AIDS patients in 1996 the first effective treatment for the deadly viral disease. Indinavir, trademarked as Crixivan®, still holds the FDA record for the fastest drug approval ever: 42 days.
"With Dr. Reider at the helm, [Merck's] process research was completed under remarkable pressure: there was a desperate need to rush drug to patients; the doses were about 100 times those for most chronic therapies; and once a patient began treatment, he or she could never be allowed to run out of indinavir," wrote a colleague to nominate him for the award.
"The line between drug discovery and drug development was traditionally a strict border -- people in development never worked on a drug until after the company collected huge amounts of data and committed to it," said Reider, now with the biotechnology company Amgen. "We asked, why not work on it earlier? Yes, there's a risk, but the payoff was better. Drugs got in the hands of patients faster."
Reider took the same approach with two other projects of which he is proud, he said: the drug Singulair®, which he also takes for his own asthma, and the arthritis reliever Vioxx®.
"My philosophy as a manager is to not think of myself as a manager at all but as a chemist," he said. "I walk through labs, talk to people, offer specific suggestions about their work and sometimes even do some benchwork."
Reider received his undergraduate degree from New York University's Washington Square College in 1972 and his Ph.D. from the University of Vermont in 1978. He is a member of the ACS division of organic chemistry.
The Earle B. Barnes Award for Leadership in Chemical Research Management is sponsored by Dow Chemical Co.