Dr. Pamela Cyrus’s curiosity has taken her far.  

Growing up in Milton, W.Va., Cyrus grew an interest in science in high school, and she found herself daydreaming from being everything from a marine biologist to her ultimate path: a doctor.  

Today, Cyrus, part of the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine Class of 1989, is Vice President and Head of the Chief Medical Office, Partnering & Issue Management for Bayer, the Germany-based pharmaceutical company.  

The job naturally takes her around the world, most frequently visiting the Bayer headquarters in Berlin from her Connecticut home. 

“I’ve traveled to all seven continents,” Cyrus said, noting she visited Antarctica, the last continent on her checklist, during a vacation earlier this year.  

However, Cyrus initially didn’t have to go far from home to build her medical foundations.  

She attended Marshall after she graduated from Milton High School in 1980. Before her classes began, she completed a summer internship in the Chemistry Department at Marshall. That gave her the direction to pursue her bachelor’s degree in chemistry. 

“I was interested in being at a university that was big enough to have all the subjects I wanted to do, but not overwhelmingly large,” Cyrus said. “Marshall seemed like a much better fit than other choices within the state.” 

Throughout college, Cyrus worked at the now-closed Morris Memorial Nursing Home in Milton, where she grew an interest in geriatric care, but came to realize she specifically was interested in neurology after caring for patients with dementia. 

Cyrus was torn between geriatric internal medicine and neurology, but a family practice physician at the Marshall University School of Medicine told her about a geriatric neurology program at Boston University. 

After she finished her internship in internal medicine with Marshall, she would go on to Boston University and complete a residency in neurology followed by a geriatric neurology fellowship during a time when there were few medical options for people diagnosed with dementia. 

“At that time, when you were treating a patient with dementia, there was only one drug approved for symptomatic relief of Alzheimer’s Disease, and you had to take it four times a day,” Cyrus said. “Most people can’t remember to take their medicine four times a day, much less a patient with dementia.”  

A large part of her motivation to pursue geriatric neurology was to conduct research to find better ways to treat and care for people living with dementia.  

She credits Marshall with giving her clinical, ethical, and practical patient care foundations, particularly because of its hands-on approach that was thanks, in part, to the school’s partnership with the VA Medical Center in Huntington. 

“Even as a medical student, as an intern, you got to do a lot more, in the way of procedures, than you would be able to do elsewhere,” Cyrus said. “When I went up to Boston University, I appreciated that I probably had more hands-on experience than some of my colleagues that had come up in the Boston system.” 

After her fellowship, Cyrus gave an emphatic “No” to recruiters who called her with opportunities unless they had a research component. In 1996, a recruiter called her with a job offer for Bayer.  

“I was a little uncertain about getting involved in the pharmaceutical industry and totally leaving patient care,” she said. “I was intrigued by the fact they were looking for a geriatric neurologist because most people didn’t even know such a thing existed back then.” 

On the advice of one of her supervisors, Cyrus took the job.  

The rest is history, including authoring clinical sections for ten new drug applications across six Federal and Drug Administration divisions and FDA advisory meetings. Before taking her current global role in 2014, Cyrus was the Head of Medical for the Bayer U.S. affiliate, which was the highest medical position within the company in the United States.  

Throughout her work and her worldwide travels, Cyrus said her experience at Marshall guided her curiosity and put her on the path to where she is today. 

“My medical school experience at Marshall made me exceedingly well-rounded,” Cyrus said. “It made me really appreciate patients and caring for patients, and I carried that through my residency and fellowship and even now because part of my job is to look out for the ethics and patient safety in everything I do.” 

Feature Story by Lacie Pierson

Date Posted: Friday, September 27, 2024