Health vs. Wealth

The world is awash in cheap antibiotics. So why is biotech billionaire Bob Duggan trying to make a new one—and how can he possibly make money from it?

- Leah Rosenbaum

Bob Duggan could easily have called it a career in 2015, after he sold Pharmacyclics, his cancer-drug biotech, to AbbVie. He was 71 years old and worth some $3 billion. He might well have retreated to his house in Costa Rica, with its giant mural of a green-eyed jaguar cub, and lived out the rest of his life on the beach, surfing and reading books about Scientology. But Duggan, now 76, rejects the idea of retirement. “It’s indigenous in every human to want to make a difference, to exercise their ability and capability,” he says. “It has nothing to do with age.”

In April, Duggan became the CEO of Summit Therapeutics by buying more than 60% of the Nasdaq-traded company for about $63 million. Summit, which was founded in 2003 but has yet to post any meaningful revenue, is developing a new antibiotic for the common but deadly infection Clostridioides difficile (C. diff), which is spread by fecal matter and is often acquired in hospitals and nursing homes. C. diff'itself causes extreme diarrhea and, in severe cases, organ failure and death. Every year almost a quarter-million Americans are infected with C. diff, and 13,000 die.