Nikos Galakatos: - The Greek who invests in the treatment of Cancer
He was born in Athens but grew up in Thessaloniki. His first role model was his mother, who in
1949, at the end of the Civil War, became one of the first women in the world to go to Harvard University to study medicine. “I saw my mother being a doctor and having an impact on patients and that affected me a lot,” he said in a recent interview. But he could not stand the sight of blood, his great love has always been the sciences so he studied Chemistry, first at Reed College and then at MIT. “As a good boy from Thessaloniki,” he jokes, “I listened very carefully to my mother. He said I should go to the US and study, and I did. “You can not predict what your future will look like, but I knew what my passion was.” His two main goals were: to engage in science and to help the world.Asked how he does this through Blackstone, Mr Galakatos said: “Our emphasis is on innovation. “We fund the development and commercialization of innovative drugs that can really make a difference to patients.” In addition to financing the development of products (they invest in the drugs themselves and not in the pharmaceuticals that each product can produce), in some cases they provide the necessary real estate, laboratories, for research and in others they provide support services, such as research groups “running” clinical trials. The Blackstone life sciences team is made up of about 100 people – half doing clinical trials, the rest making investment decisions. Some have medical or doctoral degrees and others have vast experience in the pharmaceutical and business fields. “Former CEOs of companies like Sanofi work with us.”
