Co-founder of PayPal and initial investor in Facebook, Peter Thiel knows where to put his money and has an eye for what will be successful – that much is clear. But now, his eye has drifted over to the biotech world, and once again, the money is rolling in.
According to MIT Technology Review, Thiel is now focused on defeating aging, an area of medicine he says is “structurally underexplored.”
Biotech has become cheaper and easier, so there is more probability for quick success – making investments more reasonable for someone like Thiel. But he still understands the gamble at hand and seems to have a clear understanding of what he’s getting into. As the Technology Review explained:
Most of Thiel’s biotech investments have been made by his charitable Thiel Foundation. But at least four biotechs have received funding from his venture capital firm, Founders Fund, including Cambrian, Emerald Therapeutics, and Stem CentRx, which has an antibody drug in clinical testing for lung cancer.
To Thiel, the biotech industry suffers from a structural problem. Companies have to spend tens of millions developing drugs that might work but might not. They’re not really sure, because biology is so unpredictable and complex. “Most companies are very heavily invested in the unpredictably paradigm,” he says. “But when you treat it as a lottery ticket, both the participants and the investors have already psyched themselves into losing. A small probability times a big payoff normally equals zero.”
Thiel says he’s not looking for companies that plan to gather empirical evidence, but instead would like those who have a theory that can systematically be put into practice. One example is Counsyl, a genetic testing company that Thiel has put $17 million in since 2011.
At the time, scientists were hyping the idea that DNA could tell you the risks for common diseases like diabetes. Instead, Counsyl created an inexpensive, highly automated, and consumer-friendly way to test for rare disorders whose inheritance patterns are well understood. In fact, they follow Mendel’s theory, first elaborated in the 1800s.
Counsyl’s tests are now used in connection with more than 3 percent of U.S. births, and the private company is valued at around $1 billion. It is one of Silicon Valley’s “unicorns,” those rare runaway successes that Thiel often seems to be involved with.
According to Technology Review, Thiel’s additional interest in anti-aging strategies includes him taking daily growth hormones and currently being signed up for cryonic freezing.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“The way people deal with aging is a combination of acceptance and denial,” he says. “They accept there is nothing they can do about it, and deny it’s going to happen to them.”
Back in 2011 the Thiel Foundation created Breakout Labs, which provides investments of $350,000 to prepare companies to raise more money and “de-risk” scientific ideas.
Thiel clearly knows what he’s doing in the investment arena – time will tell what additional breakthroughs he’s part of in the biotech world.
[Photo from Flickr user Heisenberg Media]
