Say the name ‘Oprah’ and everyone knows who you’re talking about. Not only is she famous, but she happens to have a rather distinctive first name. She can go by first name only.
The same can be said for a few people in biotechnology, at least among industry insiders. Of course, nobody in the business of developing new drugs, diagnostics, devices, or research tools is a household name like Oprah.
With that, here are the people in biotech who the insiders know by first name alone.
Henri. This name is mainly distinctive because of the spelling. Henri Termeer, a native of the Netherlands, showed that drug companies can be successful by treating rare genetic diseases. Henri, the former CEO of Genzyme, is part of the first generation of successful biotech executives, and he remains a mover-shaker in biotech today as he invests some of his considerable wealth in startups.
Stelios. Stelios Papadopoulos is one of the investment bankers who blazed the trail on Wall Street for biotech in the 1980s. He serves on several boards today, including that of Biogen,
Noubar. Noubar Afeyan, an Armenian by nationality who was born in Lebanon, is the founder and managing partner of Flagship Ventures, a firm in Cambridge, Mass. The firm is known for starting high-risk/high-reward biotech companies like Moderna Therapeutics, which makes messenger RNA molecules into drug candidates—an idea most biologists thought was crazy five years ago. Noubar’s firm just hauled in another $537 million to keep doing what it does.
Stephane. Stephane Bancel is the CEO of Moderna Therapeutics, which has raised a stunning $1 billion for its technology that seeks to turn messenger RNA molecules into drugs.
Corey. Corey Goodman is known as a biotech Renaissance man. He was a Stanford neuroscientist, then a biotech entrepreneur (
Christoph. Christoph Westphal is a biotech entrepreneur/venture capitalist/conference organizing whirlwind based in Boston. He has had his fingers in many big startups over the years, but is probably still best known for building Sirtris Pharmaceuticals and selling it to GlaxoSmithKline for more than $700 million in 2008. Fortune once profiled him in his Sirtris days under the cringe-worthy headline of “Can Red Wine Help You Live Forever?”
Tillman. Tillman Gerngross, a native of Austria, is another one of these biotech people who wears multiple hats. He’s a Dartmouth College professor of bioengineering, a university tech transfer official, a biotech entrepreneur (first GlycoFi, then Adimab), and a part-time venture capitalist (SV Life Sciences). See this profile from Xconomy last year.
Art/Sue/Hal. I’m lumping these three together because they all made their names working together in leadership roles during the glory years of Genentech. Art Levinson was the scientist-turned-CEO, Sue Desmond-Hellmann was the oncologist-turned-drug-developer, and Hal Barron was the clinician-scientist who worked with both to build the world’s biggest maker of cancer drugs. Their first names aren’t that distinctive, but they still stand out in biotech. Art and Hal have reunited at the Google-funded anti-aging company called Calico, while Sue is now the CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Adelene. Adelene Perkins is the CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Infinity Pharmaceuticals, and a veteran dealmaker and savvy observer of the cancer R&D field.
Katrine. Katrine Bosley is a biotech entrepreneur who sold her last company, Avila Therapeutics, to Celgene. She’s now the CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Editas Medicine – one of the early movers in the controversial gene editing field.
Alexis. Alexis Borisy is a partner at Third Rock Ventures, one of the most active biotech venture capital firms. He’s best known as the co-founder and chairman of Foundation Medicine. He also has a distinctive taste in hats (fedoras).
Clay. Clay Siegall is the co-founder and CEO of Seattle Genetics, the biggest biotech company in the Northwest. People tend to mispronounce his last name, and so it's just easy to say Clay.
Norbert. Norbert Bischofberger is the chief scientist of Gilead Sciences, the antiviral powerhouse in Foster City, Calif. He’s part of the unusually long-tenured management team at Gilead, along with CEO John Martin and COO John Milligan. No offense to the other guys, but there are a lot of other guys in biotech named John.
JJ. Jean-Jacques Bienaime is the CEO at San Rafael, Calif.-based BioMarin Pharmaceutical, who built it into a leading developer of drugs for rare diseases over the past decade. French names don’t slide off the tongue easily for most Americans, so plenty of people just call him JJ.
Kleanthis. Kleanthis Xanthopoulos is the founder and CEO of San Diego-based Regulus Therapeutics, a developer of drugs based on microRNA biology. He’s another man of the world, as his career has moved from academia to entrepreneurship to venture capital and back to entrepreneurship.
[Updated: 1 pm PT Apr. 10. Thanks to reader suggestions, here are some more names--Luke]
Len/George. Leonard Schleifer and George Yancopoulos don't have singular first names, but they are linked together in the minds of biotech pros as the duo that built Tarrytown, NY-based Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. You can't really have one without the other. Forbes colleague Matthew Herper wrote a story two years ago about "How Two Guys From Queens Are Changing Drug Discovery." As one reader helpfully suggested, they are like the 1980s musical duo Hall & Oates.
Brook. Brook Byers, the co-founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is legendary for his track record of biotech investing. He has now passed the torch to KPCB partner Beth Seidenberg, who is the active life sciences partner at the firm, but Brook still appears occasionally at industry conferences and commands respect.
Faheem. Faheem Hasnain is the CEO of San Diego-based Receptos, one of the better-performing biotech IPOs in recent memory.
JFF. Like JJ Bienaime of BioMarin, Jean-Francois Formela of Atlas Venture is a well-known Frenchman in U.S. biotech circles, and it's just easier for a lot of people to use his initials.
Josh. Josh Boger is the founder and former CEO of Boston-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals. He's still on the Vertex board, but not as outspoken and visible as he was when he was building the company. He was the central character in Barry Werth's classic book, "The Billion Dollar Molecule."
Harvey. Harvey Berger is the founder and CEO of Ariad Pharmaceuticals. The company endured some wrenching ups and downs over the years, and now Berger is facing a challenge from an activist investor, as described this week in the Boston Globe.
Sol. Sol Barer is the former CEO of Celgene, best known as the guy who took a famously dangerous drug--thalidomide--and turned it into the cornerstone of a thriving cancer drug company.
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