Fierces 10 top biotech billionairesThey are already rich, so why spotlight billionaires like Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Teva Chairman Dr. Phillip Frost?Well, the mega-wealthy have made an impact all over the biopharma world, from nourishing risky ideas in the lab with early financing to pushing major M&A activity in the industry. And its worth taking stock of the companies and investigators that have won support from some of the savviest business minds on the planet. Thats why.
For the first time, FierceBiotech has rounded up 10 deep-pocketed players whose names should ring a bell with our readers. And while the names may come as no surprise, what did strike me while writing this report was the sheer volume of biotech deals and efforts these billionaires have enabled. Check out where Peter Thiel and other wealthy Facebook folks have placed their biotech bets.
![\"\"](\"http://img.ebiomall.cn/images/brand/B1364886191_small.jpg\")
Peter ThielA search of the Forbes list of billionaires turns up dozens of names with ties to the pharma industry, yet we have decided to highlight the activities of those who have invested in innovative drug and biomedical research. Notice that some of the people made their fortunes in the tech industry, while others have dedicated their careers to building pharma businesses.It doesnt happen often, but the biotech industry minted new millionaires over the past year as values of cancer drug developer Pharmacyclics ($PCYC) and Swiss health giant Roche ($RHHBY) jumped. What good can these and other 10-figure folks do in the sector.
![\"\"](\"http://img.ebiomall.cn/images/brand/B1364886192_small.jpg\")
Dr. Patrick Soon-ShiongOne VC investor told me that billionaires likely account for only a small slice of the funding stream for biotech startups. Yet as you will see in the profiles in this report, billionaires have stepped up with cash to back bold ideas in recent years as startups struggle to garner support from traditional institutional and government funders. In the cases of Gates and biotech mogul Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, their healthcare investments make instant headlines as reporters closely follow their business interests. That kind of publicity brings extra value.
The people on this list appear in the order of their estimated net worth from Forbes and, in one case, Bloomberg. Please let us know your thoughts about this list. -- Ryan McBride
第一 Bill Gates $67 billionA champion and multibillion-dollar benefactor of global health causes, Bill Gates and his foundation have partnered early and often with biotech companies, seeking breaking advances in science to snuff infectious diseases and other ailments afflicting the worlds most vulnerable populations. Separate from his foundation, Gates has a growing portfolio of venture investments in biotech companies such as Nimbus Discovery and Foundation Medicine (a 2012 Fierce 15 company), both of which are focused on improving cancer treatment.
In biotech, the \"Gates-backed\" stamp carries weight. As a co-founder and leader of Microsoft ($MSFT), Gates helped pioneer personal computing and blazed an entrepreneurial path for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other tech royals to follow. On top of being one of the great business innovators of all time, Gates attaches his name only to societal and health matters of great global importance. If a biotech wins his support, it instantly becomes part of the epic Gates story, which people around the world follow closely.
As Forbes reports, Gates estimated $67 billion fortune makes him the second-richest man in the world. (Yet the $28-billion-plus he has given away makes him the most benevolent person around the globe.) Its hard to quantify exactly how much Gates has invested in biotech, not that the sheer dollar figures pack as much punch as the legitimacy his name has lent to a long list of new biotechnologies.
Gates has brought the spotlight to several deserving drug or diagnostics developers recently. In January, Gates and fellow billionaire Yuri Milner contributed to a $13.5 million extension of a Series B round at Cambridge, MA-based Foundation Medicine, which is commercializing a cancer diagnostic that screens patients for more than 200 gene mutations to guide personalized attacks on malignancies. In oncology, that funding built on Gates 2011 seed investment in Nimbus Discovery, which uses computer-aided drug discovery to nail down compounds against cancer and inflammation.
Gates participation in the seed round at Nimbus followed his $10 million investment in the chemistry software provider Schr?dinger, which supports drug-discovery efforts at the startup with manpower and technology.
For biotech outfits working on next-gen treatments for infectious diseases, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has become a viable funding source. In November the foundation headlined a syndicate behind a $13 million first-round financing for the MIT spinoff Visterra to develop a universal therapeutic against influenza. That deal came just weeks after nearby Genocea listed the Gates Foundation as one of the backers of a $30 million Series C round to fund work on a pipeline of T cell vaccines, including a lead candidate against herpes simplex virus-2. The foundation has also supported a much longer list of biotech outfits such as vaccines developers Tetragenics and Liquidia.
第二 罗氏家族 Estimated combined wealth = $35 billionBig Pharma fish behave a lot like sharks, gobbling up rivals in merger and acquisition deals to stay atop the industrys food chain, looking for any weaknesses in their targets along the way. Few public drugmakers are safe from M&A predators. Yet Roche has been virtually invulnerable to takeover attacks thanks to a cast of filthy rich shareholders in the bloodline of company founder Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche.
Roche stock has shot up more than 33% over the past 12 months, during which the company captured approvals for two new treatments against breast cancer, Perjeta and Kadcyla, both of which came from the prodigious oncology portfolio at its Genentech group.
Andre Hoffmann, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at RocheA jump in the Swiss pharma giants ($RHHBY) stock value has vaulted several Hoffmann heirs into the global billionaire club, where the Hoffmann-Oeri clan resides along with Roche-related rich folk from the Engelhorn family of Germany, Bloomberg reported in February. Combined, the news wire estimated, the two families are worth north of $35 billion. Yet what makes the Hoffmann-Oeri family stand out most is that they control at least half of the voting rights at Roche.
The voting rights give the family members unique clout at Roche and a deep interest in the drugmakers future despite their lack of operational roles at the company. And the family pool would likely even drown a takeover attempt from Novartis, despite the fellow Swiss healthcare behemoths ($NVS) significant ownership stake in Roche. Speculation of such an attempt rose after Maja Oeri removed her sizable interest in Roche from the family pool, Bloomberg reported, but Maja made clear that she would stay committed to an independent future for the drugmaker.
Trust the moneymen on this one. Andre Baladi, a student of the ownership arrangement based in Geneva, told the news service that the fate of Roche rests in the hands of the Hoffmann-Oeri clan and not even Novartis has the power to alter this.\"Although the family pool doesnt have the majority any more, that doesnt change the picture at all,\" Baladi told the news service. \"You cannot take over Roche, its practically impossible.\"
Though they lack the clout of the Hoffmann-Oeri family at Roche, the Engelhorn pharma dynasty brings its own interesting history. Industry mogul Curt Engelhorn brought his family riches through the 1998 sale of Corange--owner of German diagnostics provider Boehringer Mannheim and a majority stake of devicemaker DePuy--to Roche for $10.2 billion. Engelhorn, whose fortune Forbes estimated is worth $4 billion, is also the great-grandson of German chemical giant BASF founder Friedrich Engelhorn.
The Roche-related billionaires seem to shun the spotlight, but they dont need it to remain powerful players at the biopharma giant.
第三 印度太阳药业创始人 Dilip Shanghvi $9.2 billionThe past decade has gone well for Sun Pharmaceutical founder Dilip Shanghvi. Back in 2005 his fortune stood at $1.5 billion--a huge sum, but well short of the big hitters in India and beyond. Now, Shanghvi has swelled his fortune to $9.2 billion, making him the fifth Indian on the Forbes rich list. The $2.5 billion Shanghvi added to his wealth in the past 12 months made him, for the second year in succession, the biggest gainer among Indias pharma elite.
Shanghvis success is largely tied to his stewardship of Sun, which, since he founded it in 1982, has become a leading light among Indian drugmakers. Sun has attracted more headlines for its protracted, but ultimately unsuccessful, pursuit of Taro Pharmaceutical than anything else. But away from the Taro furor, Shanghvi has built a notable business. Sun has a bigger market cap than its local rivals and is highly profitable. Over the past 5 fiscal years, net profits at Sun have shot up by a compound annual growth rate of 27%.
With the Taro saga now, seemingly, finished, it is unclear how Shanghvi will try to maintain such growth. There is talk of Sun acquisitions in Brazil, Mexico or Russia--even murmurings of a $3 billion deal. Shanghvi threw gas on the gossip flames last year when he made the latest in a string of characteristically contrarian decisions. With Sun flying high, Shanghvi stepped down as chairman to hire a non-Indian, former Teva ($TEVA) CEO Israel Makov. Makov is known for growing Teva through acquisitions.
The move is something of a coup, but is highly unusual for an Indian company. Shanghvi, who is continuing as managing director, has been confounding others with left-field moves for decades. In the 1980s, when everyone else sold antibiotics to doctors, he began selling chronic pain meds to specialists. The bet paid off, and Shanghvi has continued to go against conventional wisdom.
\"Eight out of ten times, Dilipbhai has a contrarian idea which has also turned out correct,\" Tarun Shah, partner at Mehta Partners, told Forbes. Through such contrarian ideas Shanghvi has maintained the growth of Sun in a period littered with difficulties. After two years butting up against hedge funds, Sun dropped its bid for the remaining third of Taro in February. And Sun has also contended with regulatory problems at its other driver of U.S. growth, Caraco. Despite these problems, Sun has added business in the U.S. When the FDA needed a drugmaker to help with the Doxil shortage, Sun stepped forward with its Lipodox generic.
第四位 Hansjrg Wyss $8.7 billionHansj?rg Wyss reached into his deep pockets last year to help revive the ailing biotech sector and life sciences scene in Geneva, building on his previous work to tap his fortune from the medical devices industry to bankroll foundational discoveries in regenerative medicine and other biomedical fields.
In June, Wyss (pronounced Veese) sold his Swiss medical device manufacturer Synthes to Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) for $20 billion, and Forbes estimates his personal fortune to be $8.7 billion, which makes him the second-richest man in Switzerland behind the family of Ernesto Bertarelli, who is heir to the Serono biotech fortune. But unfortunately Merck KGaA, which bought Serono in 2007, last year decided to pull the plug on the Geneva headquarters of the company.
After German Mercks move dealt a blow to the Swiss biotech scene, Wyss and Bertarelli teamed up with other local interests to purchase the R&D headquarters of Merck Serono in Geneva. Wyss foundation plans to sink $100 million into the campus over 6 years to establish the Wyss Institute, a new hub of biotech and healthcare innovation. His bankroll is expected to fuel labs devoted to bioengineering and next-generation prosthetics.
The institute drew immediate comparisons to Harvard Universitys Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, which Wyss himself underwrote with a big $125 million gift in 2009, making it the largest in the history of the Ivy League school. Via the institute, Wyss has attached his name to some of the most prolific biotech inventors in the world, including Harvard chemist and Genzyme co-founder George Whitesides and Harvard geneticist George Church, a pioneer of genetic multiplexing.
With his checkbook, Wyss has shown that he endorses a brand of highly risky but groundbreaking biotech research that calls for experts from multiple fields to play roles in solving complex medical problems. And his philanthropic support of research at Harvard has already funded inventions such as a microchip model of the lung and drug-coated nanoparticles that could find use against multiple diseases.
第五位 美国华人首富 陈宋雄Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong $8 billionMovie moguls, meh. The man known as the richest person in Los Angeles made most of his moolah from the biopharma business.
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has diversified his pharma fortune into industries such as sports and entertainment as well as many things digital via his company NantWorks. And, in addition to his existing stake in the LA Lakers, his name had landed on a short list of bidders for the real estate and sports powerhouse AEG before the sale process was jettisoned in recent weeks. But his non-pharma pursuits have in no way diminished his commitment to advancing next-generation patient treatments.At NantWorks, Soon-Shiong maintains a strong interest advancing digital medicine and next-generation therapies. Early this year he came out with details about his cancer drug developer NantOmics. In July, Blackstone Group scooped up a $125 million stake in his related venture NantPharma, a maker and researcher of biologically derived drugs. And he has made either purchases or investments in diagnostics, digital medicine and other healthcare assets since he unveiled NantWorks in 2011.
If wannabe billionaires learn anything from the Soon-Shiong story, they should pay attention to how he seems to understand the value of biopharma assets and how they all complement each other better than anyone at the bargaining table. His skills in negotiation and evaluation showed in the sales of his APP Pharmaceuticals to Fresenius in 2008 for $5.6 billion and his APP spinoff Abraxis BioScience to Celgene ($CELG) in 2010 for $2.9 billion. Forbes estimates his fortune as of March at $8 billion.
Soon-Shiong spun off Abraxis from APP in 2007 and the biotech advanced Abraxane, the first nanoparticle albumin-bound cancer drug to gain FDA approval. After Celgene paid megabucks to acquire Abraxis, Soon-Shiong bought back a library of kinase inhibitors, which he is now developing at NantOmics.
Through various vehicles, Soon-Shiong has gained control of the 12,000-mile fiber-optic network of the National LambdaRail and established supercomputing capabilities to rapidly analyze data from tumor samples. The network can zap data from the computer analyses to physicians, who can then use the information to guide personalized treatments against cancer.With NantOmics and assets from NantHealth, Soon-Shiong hopes to rapidly advance development of new combination therapies against cancer. And his network reaches some 8,000 oncologists, he recently told Bloomberg TV. So he has many pieces of his new healthcare empire in motion, and it will be interesting to watch how his latest ventures progress.
第六位 Dietmar Hopp $6.5 billionWith a chunk of his SAP software riches, Dietmar Hopp has helped champion the growth of the biotech sector in Germany. Dievini Hopp BioTech Holding, his life sciences investment shop, touts a portfolio of 15 drug and diagnostics developers, and his bets on risky biotech outfits come as raising funds for such companies has tested the wills of many traditional backers of the sector in Europe and elsewhere.
So cash-hungry drug developers in Germany should celebrate the $1 billion jump in Hopps fortune during the year leading up to March, when his estimated net worth came in at $6.5 billion thanks to growth in the value of SAP shares, Forbes reported.Hopp, who co-founded SAP in the 1970s and previously served as its co-CEO, became a billionaire through decades of hard work in the software sector. Yet the high-tech industry churns out new products annually compared with a decade or more to commercialize a biotech therapy. That Hopp comes to the biotech game with a software background makes his patience and long-term commitment to development-stage biotech companies laudable.
Tubingen, Germany-based CureVac, for instance, tapped Hopps dievini for an €80 million ($104 million) financing round in September 2012 to advance experimental messenger RNA-based vaccines against prostate and lung cancers. The timeline for developing these complex therapies is long, with an estimated completion of a hoped-for Phase III study of the biotechs prostate cancer vaccine in the year 2020.
In February, Dutch regulators reversed an earlier decision and approved dievini-backed Cosmo Pharmaceuticals ulcerative colitis therapy Cortiment MMX.
Yet for every win in biotech there are many more defeats. Wilex, another biotech in dievinis portfolio, served up a stinker in October with data from a Phase III study that showed no improvement in disease-free progression in kidney cancer patients on the companys experimental antibody therapy. Wilex terminated the study, but more recently the biotech has held out hope for the candidate after an analysis showed increased benefits for a genetically defined subgroup in the trial.Wilex shares took a pounding on news of the major trial failure. Hopp, however, isnt investing in life sciences purely for financial returns. As FierceBiotechs John Carroll wrote in February, Hopp aims to support biotech in Germany in part to drive economic growth as well as to advance new therapies for serious illnesses.
第七位 Dr. Phillip Frost $2.6 billionDr. Phillip Frost has an enviable track record in the building and selling of bio businesses. An early success came in 1986 when, 14 years after taking over then-nearly-bankrupt Key Pharmaceuticals with Michael Jaharis, he sold the company to Schering-Plough. In his role as chairman, Frost helped build Key into a consistently profitable company with sales north of $150 million a year. Frost is thought to have earned around $150 million from selling his stake.
The sale gave Frost the funds to found what was to become the company that defined him as a builder of biopharma businesses, Ivax. Founded in 1987, Ivax made a series of acquisitions in its early years and became a major player in the sale of generic pharmaceuticals. Ivax was ahead of the curve on the rise of emerging markets and built strong positions in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom. This robust global footprint attracted the attention of buyers, and in 2006 Israeli generics giant Teva ($TEVA) bought Ivax for $7.4 billion. Again, Frost took home a sizable return on his initial investment.
While building Ivax from his position as chairman, Frost found the time to found North American Vaccine, by combining the assets of two existing companies, and then sell the firm to Baxter ($BAX). Yet again, Frost made a tidy profit from the $390 million in cash, stock and debt Baxter coughed up for the vaccinemaker. A more recent success story is Protalix Biotherapeutics: Frost was among the first investors in the company, but largely cashed out in 2011. Now, the rare disease model pursued by Protalix has seen it partner with Pfizer ($PFE) and generate talk of a $1 billion takeover.
It is possible Frost could have increased returns on Protalix by holding onto his shares for a few more years, but even so he has grown his net worth to $2.6 billion, according to Forbes. These repeated successes mean that now when Frost backs a company people take notice. And Frost gives them plenty of firms to track. The biggest play is Opko Health, which, in a move mirroring the formation of other Frost companies, was created in a roll-up of several firms. As with Ivax, Frost then took a managerial role and began buying and licensing assets, particularly after the failure of a key ophthalmology trial in 2009.Frost is also chairman of Teva, having joined the firm in the takeover of Ivax, and has a stake in a handful of other companies in bio and beyond. Among these is Prolor Biotech, where Frost has a large shareholding and serves as chairman.
第八位 Randal \"RJ\" Kirk $2.4 billionRJ Kirk is one of the rare people in the world with a self-made fortune from biopharma, where he has beat the long odds with multiple major successes and has stayed deeply invested. He has a track record for finding juicy opportunities, seizing big stakes and then pushing the pharma operations toward value-building milestones from a position of authority.
As of March, Forbes estimated Kirks fortune at $2.4 billion. In an industry where a lucky soul might become a millionaire from one winning venture, Kirk has sold two of his companies for more than $1 billion. Clinical Data ($CLDA), where he was chairman and controlled much of the stock, went to Forest Laboratories ($FRX) in 2011 for $1.2 billion. Earlier, in 2007, he engineered the $2.6 billion sale of New River Pharmaceutical to Shire ($SHPG).
Lately, hes bet heavily on synthetic biology, with a venture called Intrexon (a 2011 Fierce 15 company) that could become his biggest financial boon--or bust--ever. Serving as chairman, chief executive and, via his venture company Third Security, chief financier, Kirk has kept Intrexon well funded and busily securing deals with a constellation of players in drug development, aquaculture, animal health and agriculture. \"Almost nothing is off limits with the power of this technology,\" Kirk told FierceBiotech in 2011.
Whereas New River became a multibillion-dollar hit based on its ADHD drug Vyvanse and Clinical Data a winner from the antidepressant Viibryd--both standalone products--Intrexon aims to create value from use of its biotech platforms across multiple different industries and partner companies. Intrexons success depends in part on its partners successes, and the company will surely feel the sting from any key partners failure.
One of Intrexons marquee partners isnt looking so hot. Ziopharm Oncology, which is Kirks handpicked partner for Intrexon in cancer drug development, reported a major misfire as its advanced antitumor candidate palifosfamide failed a late-stage study for metastatic soft tissue sarcoma, prompting a meltdown of more than half of its stock value on March 26.
Yet Ziopharm CEO Jonathan Lewis reaffirmed his companys commitment to synthetic biology, which is obviously important to his influential board member RJ Kirk. \"It is imperative that the company rapidly focus its resources and efforts on our highly promising synthetic biology programs, employing therapeutic motifs that represent the next-generation in biotechnology,\" he stated.
第九位 Peter Thiel $1.6 billionPeter Thiel is living proof that big bets on new technologies and investments can blossom with prodigious growth or fall flat. While his hedge fund hasnt impressed, his holdings in Facebook and PayPal have made the Stanford alum a billionaire, giving him the wealth to inject his risk-taking message and money into the biotech world.
In 2011 Thiels eponymous foundation began the Breakout Labs program to fund startups with the kind of wild biotech ideas that scare off traditional institutional and government funders. Yet in his view these edgy startups--including one called Immusoft that is working on turning immune cells into drug factories and another by the name of Arigos that aims to cryogenically preserve organs prior to transplants--have the potential to bring radical change to medicine.
The nature of taking early risks in biotech is that many ideas wont pan out. Last year Thiel and fellow PayPal pal and Tesla chief Elon Musk were listed among the investors who tasted failure in biotech with bets on Halcyon Molecular, a member of the genomics herd that got trampled after running short of funds to advance faster and cheaper DNA sequencing tech. Yet Thiel has the capital to keep rolling in biotech.
Forbes estimated that Thiel is worth $1.6 billion. He cashed in handsomely on Facebooks IPO and earlier achieved tech scene master status as one of the early crew behind PayPal. (Thiel also invested early in FierceMarkets, the publisher of FierceBiotech, but sold his stake years ago.) Despite the success of his Founders Fund, the assets under management at his hedge fund Clarium Capital have dwindled.
In biotech, Thiel has set an example for other tech tycoons to follow--including much richer ones like Facebook cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Early this year Zuckerberg joined Facebook investor Yuri Milner, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki and others to bankroll research grants for the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences effort. They too want to seed breaking science.
第十位 Robert Duggan $1.2 billionRobert Duggan is the newest billionaire on our list. The Pharmacyclics CEO and life sciences veteran busted past the $1 billion mark after the value of his companys ($PCYC) shares tripled over the past year in the wake of progress with its experimental drug ibrutinib against chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).
Duggan, who had megamillions from previous holdings prior to reaching billionaire status, was worth about $1.2 billion on paper as of last month, according to Forbes. The lions share of his wealth hinges on the value of his 20% stake in his Sunnyvale, CA-based biotech, which was worth about $5.6 billion as of March 29.
He amassed the large interest in Pharmcyclics mostly from his personal investments in the company from 2004 to 2011 at a cost of $42 million, according to Bloomberg. He wrested control of the board in 2008, reaching into his own pocket to lend the company $6.4 million between December of that year and March 2009. Wisely, he took stock as repayment for the loans. Yet since he became chairman in September 2008, Duggan hasnt cost the company or its shareholders a dime, going sans salary or other compensation from Pharmacyclics.
The fate of his billionaire status rests with one drug. Ibrutinib, a compound designed to block Brutons tyrosine kinase, has shown an ability to kick some cancer ass without severe side effects--an important feature of the therapy because 70% of the 15,000 or so patients diagnosed with CLL in the U.S. every year are elderly. In December the company reported that 71% of previously untreated patients and 67% of those with relapsed disease responded completely or partially to the therapy.
Based on earlier data, Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) stepped up with a $975 million partnership pact with Pharmacyclics for a share of the potential spoils from ibrutinib sales, which analysts cited by Bloomberg have estimated could hit $5 billion. What is more, the FDA awarded the compound \"Breakthrough\" status earlier this year, meaning the treatment could gain a rapid approval without completing all three phases of development usually required to garner a market green light.
Like many of his fellow biotech billionaires, Duggan has worked in his industry for decades. He previously helmed the surgical robotics company Computer Motion until 2003, when the company merged with rival Intuitive Surgical. Bloomberg estimated that his non-Pharmacyclics fortune stands at about $250 million, so he wont be in the poorhouse if ibrutinib tanks.
