So, today is a milestone in my life. A chance I took 20 years ago finally bears fruit.

I left Immunex as a research scientist (where I had been involved in the research in what became Enbrel) after Amgen bought it in 2002. In 2004, I became Head of Research at a company - with now 3 FTEs - called Etubics (as well as being on the Board). This company had new technology that changed how we develop not only vaccines but cancer therapies. To keep costs down, I took my salary in stock.

We were very successful on the research side (there were only 3 of us but we generated over $10 million in non-dilutive SBIR grants from the government). After taking it as far as we could, we sold the company in 2016 to a company called Nantworks with the merged company called ImmunityBio.

My Etubic shares got transferred into ImmunityBio shares. For 20 years, my surrogate salary was a bunch of stock. I wondered if I had done the right thing. Science-wise it was great.

Lots of clinical trials and possible cancer therapies as well as possible disease vaccines were a real possibility. But I have had to wait 8 years for my shares to really be worth anything close to the salary I gave up in order to work at Etubics.

Today is the day. The FDA approved ImmunityBio’s therapy for bladder cancers that are refractory for any other therapy. This is the first in a slew of novel cancer therapies from ImmunityBio based more on modifying the immune system to attack the cancer rather than drugs.

It is great to have been part of something like this. Helping people is why I got into biotech research. And I am glad I was able to not require a salary in order to get that work done. But it is nice that the stock is worth something now. A real win-win for everyone.