If unorthodoxy and discipline could be blended and bottled, Bob Duggan would have another multibillion-dollar product.
For now, his fortunes are focused on an experimental cancer drug that wowed researchers at this month’s World Conference on Lung Cancer, sending the stock of his small Menlo Park-based Summit Therapeutics surging 700% — and Duggan’s net worth to about $16 billion, according to Forbes data.
“Anything is possible, if you put your attention on it. Today’s beliefs become tomorrow’s facts,” said Duggan, an 80-year-old surfer, practicing Scientologist and Atherton resident who, with his former wife, adopted six children in his 50s. Without a college degree or science pedigree, he has transformed two struggling biotech companies into thriving enterprises.
Summit Therapeutics Co-CEO and Chairman Bob Duggan, 80, talks during an interview at his biotech company on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in Menlo Park, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
He has blazed through other disciplines like a meteor, helping build a better chocolate chip cookie, Ethernet node processors and surgical robot.
Now he’s set his sights on cancer, which claimed the life of a son diagnosed with glioblastoma at age 23.
Experts say that far more data is needed to prove the lasting efficacy of Summit’s new drug, an immunotherapy called ivonescimab.
But, in David-and-Goliath fashion, the company’s drug seems to outperform the world’s best selling drug, Keytruda, made by pharmaceutical giant Merck. Data shows that it cut the risk of disease progression in half in people recently diagnosed with a deadly form of advanced non-small-cell lung cancer. Tumor growth was held off for a median of just over 11 months, compared to almost six months in people given Keytruda. It is now being tested in 18 different cancer trials.
The company, once struggling, is now headquartered on Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley’s Wall Street, tucked between venture capital and private equity firms.
This success, while tentative, is a stunning example of all that is surprising and tumultuous about biotech, an industry where noble pursuits to cure diseases face unlikely odds, with most products failing.
It also shows that those who succeed can strike gold.
The son of an Irish immigrant fleeing poverty, Duggan was born in Oakland, grew up in an $8,000 house next to a cherry orchard at the corner of Bascom Avenue and Newhall Street in west San Jose. His father was a Westinghouse engineer and his mother was a registered nurse who worked at a local cannery. Both parents fed young Duggan’s curiosity and sent him to Catholic schools: St Clair’s, St. Leo’s and St. Francis High School.
Then he ventured far off the traditional path. At UC Santa Barbara and UCLA, he took classes in philosophy, business and whatever else caught his fancy.
Summit Therapeutics Co-CEO and Chairman Bob Duggan, 80, talks during an interview at his biotech company on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in Menlo Park, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
His first company sold embroidery kits to consumers, a $100,000 investment that was later sold for …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
