The Richest Doctor In The World, Worth $12 billion, Is A Surgeon!

Meet the richest doctor in the world Surgeon-turned-entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong. The son of a village doctor in China, his family moved to South Africa during World War II.

 

He graduated high school at 16 and medical school at 22. His first patient, an Afrikaner, refused to be touched by him, but after Soon-Shiong drained his infected sinus, he told everyone, “That Chinaman. Make sure you get him to examine you.”

Soon-Shiong left South Africa in the late 1970s and arrived at UCLA in 1980. Stephen Nimer, a hematologist who would later serve on the board of directors for one of Soon-Shiong’s companies, remembers him as an “unbelievable surgeon” who was always willing to take on the most difficult cases. “It’s in his blood to help people,” Nimer says.

As a surgeon at UCLA he grabbed headlines transplanting insulin cells into a diabetic.

In 1990 he started a company to commercialize his diabetes work and got a deal with Mylan to explore transplanting pig organs into people but backed out because he decided it might be unsafe. He ended up in a legal feud that included, among others, his own brother.

Then, in 1991 he invented the drug that made his fortune: Abraxane, which packages the top-selling cancer drug, Taxol, inside the protein albumin. The idea was that tumors would eat the albumin and get the poison.

Top oncologists called it “old wine in a new bottle.” But Soon-Shiong was convinced he was on to something big. He decided on a novel–and personally risky–approach to fund Abraxane’s development. Rather than sell stakes to venture capitalists, the traditional route to bankrolling biotech research, he instead took out loans to buy a small, publicly traded generic drug business, which he renamed American Pharmaceutical Partners, folding his Abraxane initiative inside it. A physician buying group, which purchased drugs from APP, invested in it. Some said this was a conflict of interest; Soon-Shiong says the group contributed to help prevent drug shortages and sold its shares as soon as APP went public.

In 2005 he won a huge victory: The FDA approved Abraxane, defying short-seller interest, which ran as high as 100%. Shares jumped 47%.

Then in 2007 the stock soared again. The firm was the only maker of the blood-thinner heparin whose product did not have to be recalled because of contamination that killed 81 people. Soon-Shiong split and sold the company, saying it was “two unique businesses.” The generics business, including heparin, went to Fresenius in 2008 for $4.6 billion. In 2010 the drug business, Abraxis, was bought by biotech giant Celgene for $4.5 billion. Soon-Shiong owned some 80% of each.

Another multibillion-dollar windfall soon followed. Despite Soon-Shiong’s insistence that Abraxane was “a breakthrough,” by 2011 sales were just $386 million–a middling success in the booming biotech sector. Then last year a study showed the drug extended the lives of pancreatic cancer patients by 1.8 months. Sales jumped 90% and are projected to hit $2 billion by 2017. Celgene’s stock–Soon-Shiong remains the largest individual shareholder–surged in lockstep.

Cleverness, determination and luck had left Soon-Shiong with enormous wealth–Forbes puts his current net worth at $12 billion.

Soon-Shiong’s grand new project promises the closest thing that Earth has ever had to Star Trek’s fabled tricorder. In theory it will work like this: A cancer patient will arrive at the hospital for diagnosis. Everything from her DNA to the proteins in her blood will get instantly analyzed via a proprietary and superfast network, with the data collected automatically in real time–no pens, paper or clipboards. Within minutes computers will recommend which drugs to try. Once the patient is sent home, the same technology will travel with her, allowing doctors to continue to monitor her in real time, as hospital administrators evaluate the efficacy and costs of various procedures and medicines and compare notes with hospitals across the country.

As a member of the Buffett-Gates Giving Pledge, he plans to give away at least half his fortune. His donations include $5 million to the University of Chicago to develop technology to improve patient care and $136 million to St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, CA.

Source: Forbes.com (Full article to appear in the September 29, 2014 issue of Forbes.)