Pearl Huang learned how important it is to choose the right drug modality for a target on the first project of her biopharma career. When she joined Merck & Co. as a biochemist in 1990, she was tasked with unravelling how the human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cervical cancer — with an eye to small-molecule interventions. Despite rapid results, management shut the programme down to focus on a HPV vaccine. The savvy re-prioritization decision made way for the worldwide rollout of Gardasil, and left a strong mark on Huang. “I realized that I was going to have to be intellectually flexible, to be willing to work on lots of things,” she says.

Interviewed by Asher Mullard

Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.