David Pyott isn’t interested in becoming a chief executive again—“17 years as a public CEO was enough, and I do not wish to jump into another company, where in my view four years is the minimum time to make a real impact”—but the former Allergan chief executive is excited to pursue his passion for developing products that help patients.
“I really love new products and what new products can do to improve patient lives. I get passionate about an idea that can be brought to fruition,” Pyott said. He also gets excited about products that create markets and about healthcare products that change the paradigm of care.
Pyott, No. 45 on our annual OC’s Wealthiest list (see stand-alone Special Report), served as Allergan chief executive from 1998 until the sale to Actavis plc in 2015, and during that time he transformed Allergan from a small eye care business with approximately $1 billion in sales to a global pharmaceutical company with more than $7 billion in sales. He also increased research and development budget from less than $100 million to more than $1 billion.
He’s now on the board of several public and private companies, including biopharmaceutical startup Bioniz Therapeutics Inc. in Irvine. Bioniz develops peptide drugs to selectively target multiple key cytokines—agents that modulate or alter the immune response—to treat immunoinflammatory disease and cancer.
“The way we go about treating diseases is to go in and block each disease-driving cytokine, one by one, [and] that’s not good,” said Bioniz Founder and Chief Executive Nazli Azimi. She previously worked in the immune-therapy research group at the National Institutes of Health and is a co-inventor of the technology.
“Why inhibit cytokine with a single cytokine therapy when you can build a drug that can selectively block multiple cytokines at a time? If there are three bad actors, you don’t just inhibit one bad actor, you want to inhibit all three,” she said.
The company’s lead drug candidate, BNZ-1, is in studies for two orphan disease indications, T-cell leukemias and autoimmune hair-loss disease alopecia areata. Phase one trials will start in partnership with the National Institutes of Health this year for T-cell leukemias and early next year for autoimmune hair loss.
Bioniz moved into phase one following the completion of its series A round, which raised $18 million, according to Azimi. Leading the round were Pyott and Takeda Ventures Inc., the corporate venture arm of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd.—the largest pharmaceutical company in Japan. Other investors include medical device maker Masimo Corp. Chief Executive Joe Kiani and San Francisco-based investment firm Cota Capital.
“I have been very careful in selecting who my investors should be because I know things move very slowly in biotech, and people like Joe Kiani, David Pyott—they understand this business,” Azimi said. She added that the company plans to raise another round this year to support phase two trials of BNZ-1.
Pyott also pointed out Koninklijke Philips N.V., where he’s served as a board member since 2015, as an interesting player to watch, because it’s “focused purely on health tech after the spinoff of Philips Lighting.”
Royal Philips, which started in 1891as a lighting company, announced the separation from its lighting division last year. It’s now a health technology company that serves the oral healthcare, informatics, ultrasound diagnostics, imaging systems, cardiac care and home-based care markets.
The Dutch company said last month that it plans to buy medical device maker The Spectranetics Corp. in Colorado Springs, Colo., for approximately $2 billion. Spectranetics holds a vascular intervention device portfolio that includes balloons and laser atherectomy catheters for treatment of artery blockages.
Royal Philips said the acquisition complements its image-guided therapy business group.
Pyott also sits on the boards of three other companies, including packaging company Avery Dennison Corp. in Southern California, biopharmaceutical maker Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., Novato-based biotechnology company BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc., and Rani Therapeutics in San Jose.
Pyott isn’t involved with any ophthalmic companies, saying he prefers to keep his ophthalmology works in philanthropy. He’s president of the David E.I. Pyott Foundation, which works to educate physicians around the world to improve patient outcomes in delivering eye care. He said he also plans to build at least one eye clinic in Africa. The project, through a partnership with the University of Edinburgh in his native Scotland, will likely be in Malawi or Zambia.
When it comes to giving, he said he donates in the areas of eye care, disadvantaged youth and disabled people. “I prefer to give directly as possible so I can measure the impact,” he said.
Pyott joked that since he left Allergan, he has “10 part-time jobs but still six months’ vacation per year.”
A widely known mountaineer, he said he started hiking at age 10, and later graduated to rock climbing, ice climbing, downhill skiing and Nordic skiing. His most memorable hikes include Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Long’s Peak in Colorado and Monte Rosa in Switzerland on skis.
Pyott’s also publisher-shopping for his new book, “Barbarians at Fort Botox,” referencing the Allergan takeover fight. It’s a joking title that he’ll likely replace.
