This Billionaire Believes He Can Cure HIV

Forbes

By bringing together top doctors, scientists and engineers, Terry Ragon believes he can succeed where major governments have failed and cure one of the world’s wiliest viruses.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiejennings/2024/08/07/this-secretive-billionaire-thinks-he-can-cure-hiv-heres-why/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes, this secretive billionaire thinks he can cure HIV. Here's why.

00:07It's opening day at the Reagan Institute's new building, a sparkling 323,000 square foot glass and steel edifice on Main Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

00:18Governor Maura Healey, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and presidents past and present of MIT, Harvard, and Mass. General Brigham are sipping lemon spritzers and nibbling hors d'oeuvres.

00:30A choir of a dozen scientists and staffers start singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

00:36Everyone is here to toast Philip Terry Reagan, the billionaire founder of software company InterSystems, and his wife, Susan, also an executive at the firm.

00:46The Reagans have donated $400 million for research to harness the immune system to fight disease.

00:52Soon, instead of singing, these same scientists will be running experiments in a bid to cure one of the world's most elusive viruses, HIV.

01:02Giving a rare interview, Reagan, who is 74 years old, says, quote,

01:07We started to evolve this whole idea of a Manhattan Project on HIV.

01:12Reagan is referring to America's massive R&D program to build the first atomic bomb during the Second World War.

01:19Reagan, who is the sole owner of InterSystems and is worth an estimated $3.1 billion, believes, despite all good evidence to the contrary,

01:28that we are on the cusp of a similar scientific breakthrough when it comes to curing the estimated 39 million people worldwide living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

01:40It's a bit crazy. After all, huge organizations with vastly more resources than the Reagan Institute have spent decades trying to develop an HIV vaccine.

01:50After years of trials and a $500 million pledge, Johnson & Johnson pulled the plug on its last large-scale trial in 2023, a vaccine based in part on Reagan Institute research.

02:01In total, governments, nonprofits, and companies have spent about $17 billion on HIV vaccine development over the past two decades, per the HIV nonprofit Avac.

02:12Not a single one has made it beyond Phase III clinical trials.

02:17Reagan, however, is not deterred. He says government funders typically evaluate research proposals not just upon their importance, but also on the likelihood of the experiment working out.

02:29That never made sense to him. He says, quote,

02:36He believes his efforts, focused on funding riskier, earlier-stage research, will succeed where bigger players have fallen short.

02:44The need is dire. In wealthy countries, HIV and AIDS have been largely contained by expensive drugs.

02:51But the disease still killed some 630,000 people in 2022, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

02:59The CDC says about 1.2 million Americans are HIV positive. The lifetime cost of treating each person is around $420,000, according to a 2021 study.

03:12Reagan's approach has been to bring together scientists who don't typically collaborate, including doctors, engineers, physicists, mathematicians, and virologists.

03:22The goal is to re-engineer people's immune systems to cure them, which could have far-reaching implications for other diseases, such as tuberculosis, malaria, and cancer.

03:32Reagan says, quote,

03:41Reagan remains optimistic about the possibility of an HIV cure in his lifetime, in part because he has taken a similarly methodical and long-term approach to building his software business.

03:52In 1978, Reagan started Interpretive Data Services, which he would later rename InterSystems.

03:58While other database management companies like Oracle and SAP offered businesses a way to structure transactions into neat rows and columns,

04:06Reagan took a gamble on a different type of database, coded in an early programming language known as mumps, and organized like tree branches linking back to central trunks.

04:16It was fast and reliable, and soon adopted by the Department of Veterans Affairs for medical records.

04:22InterSystems grew slowly. It took 24 years to get to $100 million in revenue, driven by its two largest customers, the VA and the electronic health records company Epic Systems.

04:35It took another 21 years to get to $1 billion by 2023.

04:41For full coverage, check out Katie Jennings' piece on Forbes.com.

04:46This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

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