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onard S. Schleifer, founder, president and CEO of Regeneron, and George D. Yancopoulos, the company”™s scientific founder, president and chief scientific officer welcomed about 200 guests to the company”™s Tarrytown campus for the June 22 groundbreaking marking the official launch of Regeneron”™s $1.8 billion expansion program.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was among a host of state and local officials who joined in the celebration.
In addition to creating about 900,000 square feet of new laboratory, development and office space along with parking facilities within the campus, the company has committed creating at least 1,000 new full-time, high-skill jobs in the mid-Hudson region over the next five years. The project is expected to take place in two phases over six years, with construction expected to be completed in 2027.
“We”™re pretty special among large-cap companies in America,” Yancopoulos said. “We”™re the only one founded and still run by physician scientists. And, in part because of that, we are the only biopharma company in the world that invents and develops all of its own medicines. Many have said that over the last 10 years or so we have been the most productive company in the history of biotech with 10 FDA approved or authorized medicines all coming from our own labs right here in New York.”
Later, in an exclusive interview with the Business Journals, Schleifer said, “There”™s a lot of history here. We started here with just an idea and we built up a pretty big company. But we think there”™s a great future ahead of us and today marks that first step toward that future, to build more labs, more facilities where young, talented geniuses can come up with treatments that make a difference for people.”
While many people know Regeneron from its monoclonal antibody cocktail that has been used against Covid-19 and was given to former President Donald Trump when he contracted the disease, the company has had other breakthroughs.
“Covid-19 was a problem, which we thought our technology could address, and we did,” Schleifer said. “But we”™ve been in this business a long time and we have an important drug, the leading drug that treats blinding diseases of the retina. We have a drug that treats a variety of allergic diseases such as really bad eczema, asthma and nasal polyps, eosinophillic esophagitis. We have a drug for certain types of skin cancer, certain types of lung cancer. We have a drug that, I think, in the pipeline can really make a difference to a lot of new types of cancers and, of course, we had a drug that was able to cure Ebola and a drug that was able to deal with at least the initial strains of the Covid-19.”
Schleifer said that as the company has grown, its unofficial motto has become something his father used to espouse.
“We want to do well by doing good,” Schleifer said. “We see us going out and doing our jobs trying to make peoples”™ lives healthier, trying to help them live longer and, by doing that, that”™s our mission. There are unfortunately too many diseases, too many people suffering, and we need to work even harder to deal with this.”
Schleifer would like the people of Westchester and the rest of the world to know that Regeneron is not the evil company that some people might think just because they”™re in the pharmaceutical field.
“I don”™t think there”™s any equal in the rest of the world, any country, that could compete in the biomedical world that we operate in ”” in the United States,” Schleifer said. “The infrastructure, the investment at the NIH (National Institutes of Health) level, university level, training young scientists and physicians, men and women who want to make a difference in the world and the whole capital markets structure that helps finance these enterprises and just our system you know, nobody worries when they wake up at night to read the news whether somebody in Russia invented some new drug. Their system doesn”™t do that. Our system works. Our system provides incentives and rewards to get things done and I think we”™re getting things done here at Regeneron and the whole industry is making a difference.”
Schleifer said he hopes there is an appreciation for how difficult the process of creating, developing and bringing to market a new drug can be.
“It maybe looks easy but it”™s really, really hard and it takes super-talented people and this whole ecosystem that I referred to in the United States that”™s unequaled anywhere else in the world,” Schleifer said.
Regeneron was founded by Schleifer in 1988 when he was a young neurologist and assistant professor at Cornell University Medical College. Yancopoulos was a young molecular immunologist at Columbia University when he joined Regeneron in 1989.
In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for the year ended December 31, 2021, Regeneron reported revenues of $16.071 billion with a net income of $8.075 billion.
