Regeneron’s winning ways
In every sense of the word, an entrepreneur is one who assumes risk ”“ the risk of leaving it all behind to start anew amid the risk of losing it all.
Dr. Leonard Schleifer, president and CEO of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Tarrytown, remembered when he decided to march to the beat of the entrepreneurial drum.
Around 1988 and trained as a neurologist, Schleifer was working in the laboratories of Cornell University when he happened upon medical research articles written by biotechnology giant Genentech.
It was during that unofficial start of the biotechnology boom that Schleifer said, “We have to do the same thing.”
Finding great scientists was first on the list.
“Getting people to believe in the story and give up opportunities was a challenge,” Schleifer said. “Dr. George Yancopoulos, for instance, was being recruited by Harvard. He had a job offer at Columbia. He was one of the most sought after scientists in the world.”
Schleifer himself had a decision to make.
“When I went to my chairman of neurology, he said, ”˜Why don”™t you take a leave of absence or do it part-time?”™” Schleifer said. “I didn”™t think it was an effective way of convincing people that I”™m committed, so I said I”™m going to cut the cord, sink or swim, and I am going to try and recruit people and show them I”™m committed. George came on and a lot of good people followed, which is one of the real secrets of our success.”
Schleifer sought input from several Nobel laureates in naming the new business.
The original name was to be “Regeneuron” for regenerating neutrons.
It was shortened to “Regeneron,” for gene.
The startup had modest beginnings as a “one-bedroom enterprise” in a leaky Manhattan studio apartment in 1988.
About a year later, Regeneron relocated to a space within the 47-acre former Union Carbide headquarters in the towns of Greenburgh and Mount Pleasant.
There were four employees.
“To this day, I don”™t know why the landlord signed a long-term lease with us,” Schleifer said, and laughed.
Perhaps the landlord envisioned the modern-day Regeneron, which now encompasses some 390,000 square feet in four buildings at BioMed Realty Trust”™s Landmark at Eastview”™s 116-acre campus, and continues to grow.
There is a 100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Rensselaer and an office in Bridgewater, N.J.
And, Regeneron was just named winner of The Business Council of Westchester”™s 2010 Hall of Fame Entrepreneurial Success Award.
Schleifer credited his company”™s winning to his employees.
“In this business, there”™s a product cycle like in any other business,” he said. “It”™s a little bit longer, but products still become obsolete, products go off patent, products don”™t work out. You”™re constantly reinventing yourself. Discovering and developing a drug is not something where you can yell down to the laboratory and say, ”˜I need another drug this week.”™ The creativity and innovativeness are really the fuel of our company.”
The company has created some 400 jobs in the last two years and employs in total more than 1,000 workers.
Another 435 are expected to be hired in 2010, Schleifer said.
International pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis has provided Regeneron “$160 million worth of discovery research every year for the next eight years.”
It is funding he called “absolutely essential.”
“We are in a risk business and I think it”™s important for people to understand that if it were easy, we”™d have a couple of cure-all drugs for all of the terrible diseases and that”™d be the end of it,” Schleifer said. “The successes are really hidden very well among the hold of failures.”
Success means many things to Schleifer.
It is in the throes of drug Arcalyst, which treats painful flulike symptoms in lifelong sufferers of cryopyrin-associated periodic syndromes (CAPS).
It is in the “pivotal clinical data” for a macular degeneration drug and cancer studies that Regeneron awaits.
It is in the growing business he commands.
He understands the need for continual support of this risk business.
“We have to make sure that we balance out the need for people to have fair access to drugs at a fair price on one hand, but a proper incentive for companies to make the investments and take the risk to bring these drugs forward,” he said. “It”™s a balancing act and I want to continue to make sure we do that right.”