Leonard Schleifer condemns greed at other drug firms. But what about the $37,000 price tag on his eczema drug?
Leonard Schleifer believes in making products that make a difference to patients’ lives
Image: Jamel Topin for Forbes
Sipping a lemon-flavoured VitaminWater at a sprawling complex of laboratories and offices in Tarrytown, New York, Leonard Schleifer, the 66-year-old co-founder of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, is, as usual, criticising the pricing practices of other drug companies. (He once told the chief executive of Pfizer: “You’re not entitled to a fraction of the GDP.”)
“It’s not simply about just growing your earnings per share by raising your price,” Schleifer says. “So, yes, I’m glad I’ve been outspoken, because I think that I am trying to prevent what is still at risk of happening: If the industry does not behave properly, the government is going to step in.”
Look who’s talking. Regeneron, like other biotech firms, spends giant sums to find new cures, and it charges accordingly. Its big seller, the eye drug Eylea, costs $11,000 a year per eye. A newer Regeneron product, Dupixent, treats skin rashes; that one can run $37,000 a year. A cholesterol treatment costs $14,000 a year. Even more insane: These eye-catching prices really are cheap by pharma standards.
It took Regeneron 24 years to make back the billions investors poured into it. Now it’s making good money, $1.2 billion last year on sales of $6 billion. Wall Street values the company at $37 billion.
Schleifer and his co-founder, scientist George Yancopoulos, both kids from Queens, have made fortunes for themselves: $1.3 billion for Schleifer, mostly in Regeneron shares, and $900 million for Yancopoulos, making him one of the richest research chiefs ever, in any industry.
But Regeneron, whose shares are down by 40 percent from their 2015 peak, isn’t quite living up to expectations. Regeneron has brought to market six drugs, all co-invented by Yancopoulos, but only Eylea is a big hit. Eylea generates $6 billion in annual global sales. Bayer, which markets it outside the US, gets about 20 percent of that. The drug represents 80 percent of Regeneron’s revenue.
“ I think it’s the most meaningful breakthrough we’ve ever had in allergic disease,” says George Yancopoulos, Regeneron’s chief scientific officer
(This story appears in the 14 September, 2018 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)