A Shot to Save the World by Gregory Zuckerman

Author:Gregory Zuckerman [Zuckerman, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

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In late September 2007, Şahin and Türeci traveled over four hundred kilometers to Munich to meet Thomas Strüngmann. At that point, he and his brother owned about 3 percent of Ganymed, an investment they had made on the recommendation of a venture-capital friend, Michael Motschmann, who also held a small Ganymed stake. For the billionaire brothers, the Ganymed investment was a pittance, so they hadn’t spent much time studying the company. Still, Strüngmann was eager to meet the young scientists.

As they approached Strüngmann’s office in a tall office tower, Şahin and Türeci were hopeful that he might increase his investment in Ganymed or even buy Nextech out, removing a major thorn in their side. But ahead of the meeting, Motschmann had suggested they give Strüngmann a presentation that was about more than Ganymed. Now, they sat across from the businessman in his large conference room, Şahin in his usual T-shirt-and-sneakers outfit, Türeci dressed more formally in a smart blouse.

“What do you have in mind after this?” asked Strüngmann, who wasn’t very excited about Ganymed’s antibody research.

Şahin and Türeci handed a three-page printout to Strüngmann, Motschmann, and a few others in the room, and began discussing their true passion. What they really wanted to do was build a new kind of company, one that could unleash the immune system to fight cancer. Cancer is wily and adaptable, Türeci told Strüngmann, but so is the human immune system. Existing treatments were major disappointments. The breast-cancer drug Herceptin was a huge seller—but it only helped 20 percent of patients, Şahin said. Doctors could barely predict which 20 percent would be helped, he noted; each patient’s cancer is a bit different.

Personalized cancer treatments were the answer, Şahin argued, referring to those targeted against the specific tumors of each individual. The two scientists, sharing the floor equally, said they wanted to build an immunotherapy company that would employ innovative drug-development approaches, such as using the mRNA molecule, to stir the immune system to combat cancer. The company would be called NT, short for New Technologies, and a hint at natural numbers, which are denoted by the symbol N. Şahin promised it would upend the pharmaceutical industry.

Strüngmann, who was in his late fifties, nearly six feet tall, and dressed in a crisp white dress shirt, listened attentively, growing more enthusiastic with each new point from the scientists. By the time they finished their pitch, he was visibly excited. Two years earlier, he and his brother had sold their generic-drug company, Hexal, to Swiss giant Novartis for more than $8 billion. Strüngmann dreamed of disrupting drug giants—that’s what the generic business is all about. He had spent years listening to quips about his business. Generic companies were called pirates, copying machines, and worse by the health-care establishment. Strüngmann had heard it all. He wanted to be involved in true innovation. His father and brother were physicians, but he had chosen to go to business school; backing scientific efforts was his own opportunity to achieve medical advances.

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