BILLION-DOLLAR GENIUS
Patrick Soon-Shiong has found international success by upending the way we think about health. Now he’s decided to return to SA to give back to the country of his birth
DWe stand on the shoulders of giants. No single idea is a novel idea
Patrick Soon-Shiong childk@businesslive.co.za
ollar billionaire, cancer-drug inventor, surgeon and modernday renaissance man Patrick Soon-Shiong likes to draw detailed but somewhat unintelligible pictures of the immune system. They’re somewhere between a mind map and a doodle, and he gives them catchy names, such as “dance of the proteins”.
Speaking at the virtual Wits Botlhale Orenstein memorial lecture last week, the SA-born polymath said he didn’t expect anyone to actually read the “crazy map”. But he did want them to understand his theory that, by learning how the immune system works — down to the smallest molecule — you could harness its power by, for example, manufacturing immune cells to kill cancer.
It’s not the way he was taught to think of cancer. As he told the National Museum of American History in 2016, he had, over time, come to realise the “incongruity” of his medical training. “By giving maximum tolerant doses of chemotherapy, wiping out the immune system, you’re wiping out exactly what you’ve been God-given to protect your body,” he said.
Soon-Shiong has such a long list of achievements it’s hard to comprehend why a country that loves to punt its links to Elon Musk and Charlize Theron hasn’t made quite the same fuss about him.
Born in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth), Soon-Shiong studied medicine at Wits University from the age of 16. While there, he met his wife Michele Chan — the first Chinese student studying drama at the previously whites-only university.
In 1977 the couple left for Canada, before moving to the US, where Soon-Shiong became a NASA-funded scientist, transplant surgeon and inventor of a cancer drug.
He was the first person to transplant pancreatic islet cells, which create insulin, as a type of diabetic treatment. At the time, he requested a six-month unfunded sabbatical from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to travel the world and learn how to perform the operation, which had never been done before. His actress wife — who SA audiences may recognise from 1980s hit MacGyver — supported him financially.
On his return, he completed the transplant at the age of 30, going on to become
UCLA’s youngest professor of surgery.
Building on this knowledge, he learnt how to deliver an existing cancer drug through blood vessels, allowing it to get really close to a pancreatic tumour. To do this, he wrapped the medicine in a nanoparticle of albumin, a molecule on which cancer feeds.
The drug, Abraxane, is used today to treat breast, pancreatic and lung cancer. It was revolutionary at the time, in that it went against the understanding that cancer cells should be starved rather than fed.
Selling Abraxane to a drug company for $2.9bn gave Soon-Shiong the “luxury” and “freedom” to spend the past decade learning how to harness the immune system’s natural killer cells, training them to recognise cancer cells and destroy them.
It’s building on an understanding of cancer that dates back to 1909, he told the Wits lecture. “We stand on the shoulders of giants,” he said. “No single idea is a novel idea.”
To develop Abraxane, Soon-Shiong had to learn about the large-scale manufacture of complex biological global products — something that has stood him in good stead, he says. He hopes to improve the manufacturing of complex biological medicines in SA, and he’s identified two sites in the Western Cape to do so.
The Covid pandemic, and the likely lure of working with world-class scientists such as Prof Glenda Gray and Prof Shabir Madhi, has led Soon-Shiong back to SA.
He’s working alongside the SA Medical Research Council to trial his Covid vaccine boosters on health-care workers, to determine if they offer a longer-lasting immune response.
Soon-Shiong is determined to give back to SA, and he tells the FM he wants to be a “catalyst for change”.
“I want to truly make a difference ... and help all boats rise.”
To date, he has bought an office building in Brackenfell, Cape Town, and land at Atlantic Hills — a logistics hub for biological manufacturing located near Bloubergstrand.
Because his cancer and Covid vaccines are under trial and so are not yet proven therapy, it’s likely his manufacturing work with the Council for Scientific & Industrial Research will be research-based.
For now, he’s awaiting regulatory approval from the SA Health Products Agency for a second vaccine trial in SA (he’s expecting an answer within days).
Soon-Shiong’s representatives in SA are also involved in signing agreements with the universities of KwaZulu-Natal, Stellenbosch and Wits to drive research. Though discussions are at an early stage, Wits has confirmed that he’s bought a building for cancer research at the institution.
Scientists, it seems, are lining up to connect with a man whose work — and thinking — can bring them into the fourth industrial revolution, even as cures for cancer and Covid remain elusive.