From Rural France to Cutting Edge Science: Murielle Véniant Ellison’s Journey to Obesity Research

Murielle Véniant was 15 years old the first time she saw her father cry.

She was sitting in the back seat, her dad's car carefully navigating the narrow, two-lane roads near Dijon, France. She found herself looking out the window and, on this cold morning, it was hard to see where the gray sky ended and the frost-blanketed fields began.

It all felt strange. Unsettling. The inside of the small sedan was somber - a stark contrast to the mood a day earlier when her father had driven this route to visit his brother on Jan. 1, 1984. It had always been a tradition for them to drive and visit the homes of family members every New Year's Day. At each stop, they would gather and toast to a fresh start and good health.

The last stop that New Year's Day had been in the early evening at her uncle's house. Her Uncle Joseph was sarcastic, and his dry sense of humor always made her dad laugh. He was much older than her dad and had been a father-figure to him growing up.

She watched them raise their glasses of schnapps and when they finally left to go home that night, she was tired from the full day of visiting everyone. Sleep would come easy that night.

But early in the morning on Jan. 2, her father was awakened by the wooden shutters being pelted by small rocks. When her mother and father opened the door, the neighbor who had been throwing the stones told them that her Uncle Joseph had died.

Véniant, from the hallway, heard her father begin to cry so hard it sounded like he was choking. Later that morning on the drive to her uncle's house, between looking out the window and towards the front seat of the car, she saw her dad wipe away tears. And as they drew closer to her uncle's house, Véniant's mind raced: How could her uncle - laughing, toasting to good health - be so alive one day and be dead the next?

She felt scared - mostly because she worried it would happen to her father next. But she had big questions. How did her uncle die? Why did he die? She learned through quiet whispers that it was a heart attack. He was just 49 years old. Suddenly, her father didn't seem so old either.

Véniant, who already had a budding interest in biology, began to ask herself another question: Is there anything she could do to fix this? She remembered her father's mortality feeling so much closer than ever before.

And so, Véniant began a long career journey of scientific research focused on fighting disease. It was a journey that took her from France to Scotland to San Francisco and ultimately to Southern California - a culmination of about 40 years that would result in a possible breakthrough in obesity and related conditions at Amgen.

Obesity as a Disease

The relationship between obesity and many other health issues had often been hinted at, but it was not widely viewed as a disease of its own until the last couple of decades when the American Medical Association labeled it as one in 2013.

Previously, studying obesity as a disease instead of a personal failing was reserved for outliers who saw it as a complex confluence of genetic, environmental and socio-economic factors. The stigma attached to obesity often resulted in discrimination and inadequate access to healthcare - resulting in, among other things, exacerbated disparities in cardiovascular health outcomes.

Studying obesity as a disease holistically in relation to traditional diseases such as high cholesterol gradually emerged as a path for biotech and pharmaceutical companies to seek ways to assist in targeting obesity.

Obesity has emerged as a public health crisis globally and, as medicines seek to stem that tide, the race to find better medicines is speeding up through innovations and new ways of studying the biology that contributes to people living with obesity and related conditions.

Véniant is helping lead the charge with an innovative approach to tackling obesity with an investigational medicine, maridebart cafraglutide (formerly AMG 133). Its shortened name is MariTide and was inspired partially by her name.

She points out that MariTide has a somewhat different approach to other obesity-related medicines currently on the market and, without going into too many details as it is still in clinical trials, she noted that one of the more exciting aspects of this investigational medicine is that patients may be able to take fewer injections.

Early Days of Study

Véniant knew she wanted to study biology when she was 10 years old and, as an animal lover, imagined becoming a veterinarian.

In the small town she lived in, her father was the schoolteacher and the classroom was in her house. It was set on a hill. She said money was sparse and one way they raised cash was by raising and selling guinea pigs. That, along with rabbits and the family dog, resulted in her developing a fascination with animal biology.

Poring over biology books, she learned about the circulatory system in animals and what made up the cells inside the animals she saw around her.

"My father would always find me with the rabbits looking at them and studying them," she said. "I could feel my love and interest for this course of study as early as then."

By the time she reached high school, and around the time of her uncle's death, she switched her focus to the biology of humans.

"After he died, I needed to know how you can see a person looking so good one day and the next day they could just be dead," she said. "It was traumatic. But it also began my interest in studying the causes of cardiovascular disease."

When she completed high school, she attended the University of Dijon, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacology and then receiving a doctorate in that same discipline. While attending school, she would spend her summers in labs while doing internships at Hoffman La Roche.

Then she got her first break.

She got a chance to move to Scotland to work on a post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre for Genome Research. It was her first time living away from France for any extended period and she wasn't entirely sure where it would lead. But it felt important - like she had taken the first steps on her career path.

"It was an exciting time for me," she said. "I was going to have access to more equipment, more information and it meant I could take a big leap in learning more."

Life Changes in Scotland

Despite the exciting new scientific challenges at her lab in Edinburgh, Véniant found herself homesick for France in those early days.

She was renting a small maid's room within a short distance of the Centre for Genome Research and spent most of her time staying in her lab working on molecular biology and issues related to hypertension. She was often alone, so focusing on the work helped ease the isolation she felt.

"I didn't know anyone and wasn't familiar with the area, so I would wake up and go to work around 9 a.m. and I'd come home to sleep around 11 p.m.," she said. "I really didn't have much else to do."

Because it was expensive to make long distance phone calls in those days of landlines, she would stay in touch with her family in France by sending faxes. "They were written in French, so nobody at the lab knew what they were about," she said.

They were her only real connection to family in that first year in Scotland.

She said her parents were able to visit her once at Christmas, but other than that it was a steady and daily grind of experiments, papers, reading and learning that fueled her desire to obtain as much information as she could about human biology.

Aaron Ellison, who was working in a lab next door to her during those years, was in a similar situation - a long way from his home in the United States and didn't know many people in Scotland. He found himself striking up conversations with Véniant well after the rest of the building was largely vacant.

"She had a good sense of humor and, as an American out of the country, I was getting an international view of the world and suddenly here is this smart, nice-looking French woman working right next to me," he said. "We ended up spending a lot of time with each other."

They began dating. Soon, their bond grew tighter and he knew he had to propose to her. But he wanted to make sure he got it exactly right.

He had found a painting of Princes Street in Edinburgh that featured a city scene with a bench in it. They went for a walk several days before they were planning to move to the United States. He had bought an engagement ring and he took her to the bench featured in the painting and asked her to marry him. He gave her the painting then, too.

It didn't matter that it was a gray, gloomy day with rain falling on them as he asked.

"Of course I said yes," she said.

The painting, he told her, was a way to forever have hanging in their house the place they both decided to get married. It has hung where they lived at multiple stops and now is near the front door at their home in Thousand Oaks, California, near Amgen's headquarters.

She said the proposal and knowing she would have a life-partner with Ellison gave her a boost to move to the United States.

Véniant said the time in Scotland studying molecular biology turned out to be critical to her work later in lipids and on diabetes before moving to obesity and, ultimately, MariTide.

"I had to learn the rules and have a strong foundation for the science first," she said. "Once you have that understanding, you can then be more creative and take more chances in research later on."

A Start in San Francisco

The couple moved to San Francisco in June 1995 to do a five-year stint at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease.

She zeroed in on cardiovascular disease with a lipid angle. It was a key time for her to try and make sense of what would later become big pieces for trying to solve the obesity puzzle.

But while she was studying the science, she was also juggling being a newlywed - adding the hyphen to her last name to become Véniant-Ellison. She also was applying for a green card and trying to make ends meet living on a lean income in the Bay Area. They had no money for a honeymoon - something they deferred until two years later - and not even enough cash for a car to get to and from work.

"When you don't have much, it's hard to get things. We got lucky - or so we thought - and rented a one-bedroom apartment," she said.

The challenges at the place became apparent almost immediately.

Many nights, it "was a madhouse of partying." Chickens and other small animals wandered in and out regularly. Trying to focus on their work proved to be impossible and they were forced to hunt for a new place in San Francisco. They found another apartment before settling into a small house when she met a person who just happened to be headed to France to live and needed someone to take care of the place.

It was a hectic time.

The purchase of a car had been delayed because they couldn't get a loan from a bank and had to pay cash for it. She used to walk to the University of California, San Francisco, campus. From there, she caught a free shuttle to go to Gladstone to work. Then they bought a car, moved to the apartment and she began to bicycle from there every day. "It was a good workout on the bike," she said. Just before her daughter was born, they moved to the house and they both had to share one car.

Ellison was working on his doctorate at the same time and had to defend it. They also found themselves meeting with State Department authorities as Véniant-Ellison went through the process to obtain a green card.

They both remember practicing and feeling stressed during the process.

"You feel like you're being interrogated and if you say the wrong thing, it could go south quick," she said. "We had to think 'Do we really know each other?' Like, what kind of toothpaste does he use?"

Her five years at the Gladstone Institute, however, gave her a firmer foundation for the work she wanted to do when she was hired by Amgen in 2000.

Long Drives

Because her husband was still in San Francisco doing his post-doctoral work at UCSF and didn't have a job in Southern California near Amgen's headquarters, she moved down without him to begin working while living in temporary housing.

She said the first few months were challenging as she would drive up to the Bay Area every other weekend to see her husband and 2-year-old daughter.

Amgen was flexible with her under the difficult circumstances and let her finish work late Wednesday night and make the drive up in her small Toyota every other week. To help stay awake on the return trips Sunday night, she would listen to Depeche Mode, REM, New Order and Sting - singing along or letting her mind wander to thoughts about her daughter.

"I felt bad and that I was missing out on a lot with her in those months," she said. "It felt like she had changed each time I got up there."

She also thought about her work. Sometimes, on the dark drives back, her mind would go to her small town in France and the drive to see her uncle after he died. Here she was, more than 6,000 miles from her small town in France still on the journey to find out what went wrong with her Uncle Joseph and how many others since then had suffered the same fate.

Amgen, she thought, could really be the place to find the answers.

Lipids, Diabetes…and Citizenship

Amgen in 2000 was still riding the wave of its early success as a maker of blockbuster biotechnology medicines and she sensed a lot of optimism and energy.

Véniant-Ellison would come into work, ensconced in a small, cramped office, and had thought she would continue to work on lipids - something she saw as key to overall cardiovascular health and maybe a critical piece of a puzzle she was trying to solve.

But the company pivoted and she found herself needing to look into another area of study. She opted for diabetes and, with a small team of about 20 scientists, began doing research on it.

Still, there was this nagging thought that all these elements - lipids, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease - were part of something bigger. She had noticed obesity rates were on the rise in both the United States and around the world but was also acutely aware that few were looking at it as a disease as well.

But getting traction on studying obesity at Amgen through 2013 was virtually impossible. Even though obesity had been labeled a disease by then by the American Medical Association, there were many disagreements about the role of genetics, psychology, lifestyle, economic and environmental factors that played a role in it.

"There are 350 million experts in obesity and everyone has an opinion on it," she said. "I just wanted to see what the science said."

Her husband had landed a job in Westlake Village, California, and had moved down to join her - along with their daughter and that helped raise her spirits.

And by the following year, Véniant-Ellison was also on her path to become an American citizen with the swearing-in ceremony at the University of Southern California. Then her son was born on September 7. She came home from the hospital on September 10.

The next morning, she woke up to see the news: Terrorists had flown airplanes into the Pentagon and Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

She felt very far from home. It was hard to reach family on the phone back in France and the world felt uncertain and unstable.

But in the labs at Amgen, things made more sense.

Nothing to Something

Véniant-Ellison had two children and, along with her husband, was raising them in Thousand Oaks while she tried to find traction for work on obesity.

Her first decade at Amgen had been a series of starts and stops in diabetes, lipids and kidney disease, but even though they hadn't led to a final destination, it all seemed to be adding up toward something.

Renee Komorowski, a principal scientist at Amgen, had been working with Véniant-Ellison since 2000 and said she remembered when there was a pivot away from her lipid research and how deflated her colleague seemed.

Komorowski said that despite the drifting nature of what their tiny team was doing in their small office at Amgen, Véniant-Ellison leaned on her perseverance to keep going.

"She has an insatiable curiosity and drive for scientific advancement," Komorowski said. "It was clear she was beating to a different drum. She was unrelenting."

By 2013, even with the American Medical Association labeling obesity a disease, there wasn't a lot of energy being directed at developing molecules to target obesity.

Véniant-Ellison kept working in the lab and in 2016 made a promising development with another investigational target that felt like it might be the break that she was looking for to finally pull together her life's work.

Madeline Fort, a scientific director for Amgen who has been with the company since 2006, said Véniant-Ellison isn't easily deterred.

"She leaves no stone unturned," Fort said. "She will do the experiments and isn't afraid of the results. It's her adaptable, determined and persistent attitude that led us."

When the new molecule showed promise, Véniant-Ellison began to get the feeling that she and her team might be finally on the right track with something.

It would eventually be MariTide.

The Future from the Past

Her children are grown and while both Véniant-Ellison and her husband still live in the same house they bought when she first moved to Thousand Oaks 24 years ago, the path to get here seems both a long time ago and just like yesterday all at the same time.

The path for MariTide has mirrored the time she's been a parent to her children.

"This program that we have internally is like our children and we want them to graduate and go all the way to the end," she said. "College is when it goes in the clinical trials and then marketing is like now they have a job. They are big people. We like to see them go all the way, but I've learned that you need a lot of moons to line up to get there."

But there is hope and Véniant-Ellison has seen the change and growth at Amgen related to obesity in the past seven years. It has come with excitement from all levels of the company - from high-level meetings to on-site symposiums at Amgen's headquarters to Véniant-Ellison being recognized as a woman of influence in the Los Angeles Business Journal and being asked to give the Havel Lecture at the annual Deuel Conference on Lipids in 2022.

She was the first industry-based scientist asked to give the talk since the lectureship began in 2002. Her topic: Targeting dual mechanisms for treating obesity. And she continues to present on this topic at key industry meetings like the 60th European Association for the Study of Diabetes Annual Meeting in 2024.

"Obesity is at the root of a lot of disease," she said. "Type 2 diabetes starts with added weight. The heart has to work harder because you are carrying more weight. Knees start collapsing walking on more weight. You stop sleeping well because of sleep apnea that is affected by weight."

Véniant-Ellison is getting more attention, but so much of her life remains unchanged as well. She remains a passionate fan of cooking. She still likes to run, ride her mountain bike and go skiing. She likes thrillers as it reminds her of the methodical way scientists gather clues to solve a case. She reads fiction to keep her mind creative and think of different solutions to problems.

During the pandemic, when people were quarantined and isolated and early data was being generated from MariTide, she sometimes would go into Sycamore Canyon by her house and reflect.

In that quiet setting away from the busy world, she could look back on her journey to where she is now - more than 6,000 miles from a small town in France where she saw, as a young teenager, her father cry for the first time on a cold January morning and where she began asking the big questions that she has been on a lifelong path trying to answer.

Now, that answer feels closer than ever.

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