After fleeing South Africa during the apartheid era, Patrick Soon-Shiong rose to prominence as a doctor, pharmaceutical magnate, basketball team owner, newspaper mogul, and Los Angeles’ richest man.
Although Soon-Shiong was born in 1952 in Port Elizabeth, which is now known as Gqeberha, she currently resides in Tinsel Town.
His parents were shopkeepers who relocated to South Africa following the Japanese conquest of China. He had a herbalist for a father.
He acknowledged that, despite his claim that his early years were normal, it was “a strange normal” because he was neither black nor white in South Africa during the apartheid era.
He had Chinese, Indian, white, and black pals growing up, even though he couldn’t seat in the normal bus compartments.
At sixteen, he enrolled at the University of Witwatersrand to study medicine. He would go on to place among his class’s top four out of 200.
However, the South African government had to grant him authorization to work as a Chinese doctor in South Africa for the first time, and he was compensated 50% of his colleagues’ salaries.
At a basketball game during his sophomore year of college, he met his future wife, Michele B. Chan. He claims that even now, basketball is what keeps him sane.
The couple relocated to Vancouver, Canada, for his junior residency after being married in 1977.
He became the youngest professor of surgery at UCLA after being promoted straight to head resident at UC Davis.
At the age of 30, he performed the first two whole open kidney and pancreas transplants at UCLA.
But because of the risks involved, he requested that his chairman instead concentrate on islet cell transplants.
This method can be used to treat type 1 diabetes and involves transplanting isolated islets from a donor pancreas into a recipient.
After a “sabbatical,” which he could afford due to Chan’s work as an actress in America, he performed the first islet cell transplant at St. Vincent’s Medical Center.
Despite being a well-known physician, Soon-Shiong amassed his wealth in the pharmaceutical industry.
In 1991, Soon-Shiong left UCLA to launch VivoRx Inc., a biotechnology company focused on diabetes and cancer. Additionally, in 1997, he established American Pharmaceutical Partners (APP) Pharmaceuticals.
He would then go on to purchase injectable generic drugs maker Fujisawa in 1998, and use its revenues to develop Abraxane.
Abraxane used paclitaxel, which was already used in chemotherapy, and wrapped it in a protein that made it easier to target tumours.
The drug was extremely successful due to its efficacy against pancreatic cancer. He would then become the founder of Abraxis BioScience in 2001, which would make Abraxane.
He would sell APP in 2008 and Abraxis in 2010 for a combined $9.1 billion.
Although he is now the richest man to live in Los Angeles, his net worth has dropped dramatically over the last several years.
Forbes stated that his wealth fell from $12.2 billion in 2015 to $6.2 billion in 2024.
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