Cancer drug once bought for $7 million may fetch $18 billion

Gleevec, which Druker pioneered, attacks the main gene mutation that causes CML, or chronic myeloid leukemia. In CLL, it wasn’t clear that a pathway blocked by Imbruvica would prove crucial in slowing down tumors until it was tested in people, he said.

In one 391 patient study, Imbruvica significantly delayed progression of the disease and lowered the death rate by more than half in patients who had failed other therapies or relapsed.

‘Major advances’

“It is one of the major advances in CLL treatment in the past couple of years,” said Jae Park, an adult leukemia doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “It is not a cure, but it is relatively easily tolerable.” That’s important because many cases of CLL occur in older patients, and some cases can progress very slowly.

Like Gleevec, the number of people on the drug has potential to grow greatly over time, as patients using the drug live longer and if it ends up replacing chemotherapy as an initial treatment for CLL, said Brian Skorney, an analyst at Robert W. Baird. The sales trajectory of Imbruvica “has really blown away every other oncology launch with the exception of Avastin,” made by Roche Holding A.G., he said.

Pharmacyclics got the drug in 2006, when it bought a group of drugs for $2 million in cash, and 1 million shares. Duggan took control two years later, ousting then-CEO and co-founder Richard Miller and three other board members after an experimental cancer drug failed. Duggan ordered researchers to focus on a new series of experimental treatments, one of which became Imbruvica.

Investor history

A sale of Pharmacyclics would be in keeping Duggan’s investment history. The billionaire has invested in and then sold half a dozen businesses starting in the late 1960s, including Cookie Muncher’s Paradise, a bakery business that is now part of Panera Bread Co., and MAG International B.V., an eastern European billboard company he sold in 2006 to JCDecaux S.A.

Duggan is also a member of the Church of Scientology. He’s one of the organization’s largest donors, with gifts of at least $20 million, including some Pharmacyclics shares. Duggan confirmed membership in the organization in 2013 while declining to confirm his giving.

“I feel it is an honor and personal obligation to share my financial success with Scientology,” he wrote in a 2013 e-mail to Bloomberg News.

See also: Specialty drugs: What will sick people do?