Huge market, more responsibility lure chemist. (People).

MARK Suto, the new chief scientific officer and executive vice president of Neurion Pharmaceuticals Inc., will be happy with a small piece of a very, very large pie.

The venture-backed Pasadena firm brought on Suto from Deltagen Research Laboratories in San Diego, where he was vice president of chemical and biological sciences, to oversee development of drugs that can be used to treat central nervous system diseases.

The world market for those drugs is around $50 billion and growing by about 15 percent annually.

"Even a small percentage of that market is pretty nice for a small company like ours," Suto said. "The market is growing because our population is changing. Down the road, we're going to see a huge demand for drugs to treat diseases like Alzheimer's."

Neurion employs proprietary methodology to identify cardiovascular drug toxicity, enabling it to develop new central nervous system drags that have less chance of producing dangerous side effects.

"I always envisioned myself working in drug discovery. I always wanted to try to find new medicines. The idea of discovering a new drug is pretty exciting," Suto said. "Now I'm in charge of the drug discovery program, setting up corporate alliances and intellectual property, so I have much broader role than I did as a chemist in the lab."

Neurion, started in January 2002 by two California Institute of Technology scientists with less than $1 million from Los Angeles venture capital firm Convergent Ventures, landed a contract with Pfizer Inc. earlier this year to develop central nervous system drugs. The company would not disclose the value of the contract.

Suto, who had been executive director of chemistry at DuPont Pharmaceuticals before joining Deltagen, was born in western New York State. He received both his undergraduate degree in medicinal chemistry and a doctorate from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Married, he splits his time between his home in La Jolla and an apartment in Pasadena.