After losing his job at Pfizer in 2011, Yeadon set up a biotech company called Ziarco with three Pfizer colleagues. They wanted to continue researching promising therapies that targeted allergies and inflammatory diseases, ideas Pfizer had been developing but were at risk of being abandoned. Yeadon served as Ziarco’s chief executive.
“I simply showed chutzpah and asked the senior-most people up the research line” at Pfizer to support the venture, Yeadon later recalled in an interview with Forbes. “And they said, ‘OK, assuming you raise private capital.’”
In 2012, Ziarco announced it had initially secured funding from several investors, including Pfizer’s venture capital arm. Other investors later joined, including an Amgen Inc corporate venture capital fund. Amgen didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“The intensity of effort took me away almost completely from my family and other interests for almost five years and you get only one life,” Yeadon told Forbes.
On Twitter, Yeadon said he is married and has two adult daughters, and described a tough childhood – he said his mother committed suicide when he was 18 months old and his father, a doctor, abandoned him when he was 16. He said he was saved by a local social worker and adopted by a Jewish family whose “open handed love turned my life around.”
While at Ziarco, Yeadon also worked as a consultant for several years at two Boston-area biotech companies, Apellis Pharmaceuticals and Pulmatrix Inc. Both firms said he no longer advises them. A spokeswoman for Apellis said, “His views do not reflect those of Apellis.” She didn’t elaborate.
After losing his job at Pfizer in 2011, Yeadon set up a biotech company called Ziarco. It was later bought by Swiss drugmaker Novartis. REUTERS/Charles Platiau
The hard work at Ziarco paid off. In January 2017, Novartis acquired the company for an upfront payment of $325 million, with the promise of $95 million more if certain milestones were met, according to Novartis’ 2017 annual report. Novartis was betting on the promise of a Ziarco drug, known as ZPL389, that had the potential to be a “first-in-class oral treatment for moderate-to-severe eczema,” a common and sometimes debilitating rash.
Reuters wasn’t able to determine how much money Yeadon made from Novartis’ purchase of Ziarco. But in January 2020 he tweeted: “Oddly enough, I made millions from founding & growing a biotech company, creating many highly paid jobs, using my PhD & persuasion around the world.”
Last July, Novartis disclosed it had discontinued the ZPL389 clinical development program and had taken a $485 million write down. A Novartis spokesman said the company decided to terminate the program after disappointing efficacy data in an early-stage clinical trial.
Taitaa olla vähän kaunoja Michael Yeadonilla. No, nyt saa sitä kaivattua hyväksyntää kaikilta rokotevastasilta ja kriittisiltä.
Many former colleagues say they are baffled by his transformation.
Mark Treherne, chairman of Talisman Therapeutics in Cambridge, England, said he overlapped with Yeadon at Pfizer for about two years and sometimes had coffee with him. “He always seemed knowledgeable, intelligible, a good scientist. We were both trained as pharmacologists … so we had something in common.”
“I obviously disagree with Mike and his recent views,” he said. Treherne’s company is researching brain inflammation, which he said could be triggered by coronaviruses. “
This does not sound like the guy I knew 20 years ago.”
Mitä lie ukolle tapahtunu.
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