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Tweet To The Chief

Published: Friday, 15 Jan 2010 | 2:52 PM ET

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By: Mike Huckman
CNBC Correspondent

Richard Pops
Source: Alkermes.com
Richard Pops

Props to Pops.

Richard Pops, that is.

The Chairman and CEO of Alkermes [ALKS Loading... () ] had the chutzpah to get on Twitter yesterday. And he apparently isn’t just there to be a voyeur and to keep an eye on what’s being said in the biopharma Twitterverse. Pops has already sent out at least a couple of tweets.

As far as I’m aware, he’s the first CEO on my beat to take the plunge and actually begin to engage. There might be others out there under aliases or who get fed relevant tweets by their handlers, but he’s the only one, again, that I know of, who’s out there as himself, presumably on his own.

If you’re not familiar with ALKS, it’s probably best known for being part of the three-way partnership with Lilly [LLY Loading... () ] and Amylin [AMLN Loading... () ] on the once-a-week diabetes drug that’s waiting for FDA approval on or by March 5th. Alkermes provides the technology that allows the drug to last in the body for a week. I got to know Pops and the company several years ago when it was in the process of winning approval of a once-a-month shot in the butt for alcoholism called Vivitrol. It’s now in the home stretch of trying to get the FDA okay of the same drug for opioid painkiller addiction.

Pops is a fixture on the Cambridge, MA biotech scene. I have it on good authority that he sat next to outgoing Biogen Idec [BIIB Loading... () ] CEO Jim Mullen on their flight back to Boston from the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco this week. No, they weren’t sitting in back. But at least now Pops is mingling with the hoi polloi in social media.