Wayne Fenton: Impact on Food and Drug Administration

I had known about Wayne Fenton for a number of years before I had an opportunity to meet him. He had written several articles that I found quite interesting, and my wife, who is a psychiatric nurse, had met him and spoke very highly of him. He had been to her unit to recruit patients for studies, and she had some other contact with him involving patients he treated. She considered him an unusually gifted clinician and teacher and a very down-to-earth human being. Then the Measurement And Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (MATRICS) program was launched, and I finally met him in an introductory session on this program at Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He was there with others from National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Steve Marder from University of California, Los Angeles. The purpose of that meeting was to engage FDA in this process because the program could not have gone very far without our support. I have been in government a long time, and I have seen a lot of programs come and go, and most do not survive, either because they are not well conceived or not well executed. That first meeting was reasonably promising, but I still did not give the program much of a chance, mostly based on the overall low odds of success. But I do remember Wayne Fenton from that first meeting. He was not the primary architect of the program, but he was clearly someone who would push it along and make it happen, if it was going to succeed. These meetings always involve a sales pitch of some kind, but he was so genuinely invested in the idea, so well informed, and so motivated by his concern for the welfare of schizophrenic patients that he did not have to do much selling. I liked him immediately, and I agreed to participate. The program took off from there, and he did push it along as I expected he would. Coming from anyone else, that part might have been irritating, but somehow I did not mind being prodded by Wayne. There were a series of meetings, quite successful I felt, and Wayne always had an understated but clearly critical role in making them work. He brought people together and made sure they got done what needed to get done. He was a masterful facilitator. I think MATRICS has been a success, both in terms of defining a path forward in developing cognitive impairment in schizophrenia as a target for drug development and also as a model for government, industry, and academia to work together. Programs focused on this underserved aspect of schizophrenia are underway and hopefully will result in new medications to treat this condition. I am also hopeful that the MATRICS model will be used in other areas of joint interest. In the spring of 2005, I got an e-mail from Wayne asking if FDA would allow me to receive a Director's award from National Institutes of Health along with him, Ellen Stover, and Linda Brady for our efforts in the MATRICS program. I of course said yes, and I remember feeling immense gratitude for this offer. I knew Wayne must have had a role in selecting me to participate in this honor, and it was just another example of his inclusiveness. On the day of the award ceremony, I got to NIMH a little early, and Wayne took me around to show me the newly renovated clinical center and introduced me to some of the staff who worked on the inpatient unit. He was so obviously well liked and respected by the staff. I was proud to be on the stage with Wayne and the others at the Mazur Auditorium receiving that award in July 2005. After the MATRICS program was well on its way, my contacts with Wayne diminished. We did have some interactions on the negative symptoms program, and we were involved in a director's level meeting to generate ideas to stimulate new medications development over the following year. Then in September 2006, I remember getting the awful call from my wife about Wayne's tragic death. I remember wishing I had gotten to know him better than I had. I think we can best honor Wayne by carrying forward with the programs serving the patients he cared so deeply about.