What drew Vagelos to Regeneron in 1995 was founding scientist Yancopoulos, a graduate of Columbia University’s medical school, Brown said. Because Yancopoulos had never taken a drug to market, Vagelos served as a father figure who retooled Regeneron’s research process and constantly reviewed its science, Brown said.

When Vagelos joined the struggling business, he helped develop the idea of trapping and neutralizing molecules that might be involved with the disease’s development, a process that fueled the success of Eylea, a drug for macular degeneration. The treatment was approved in 2011 and crushed sales estimates.


Reshaped Objectives


“I felt Regeneron was in a position to do what Merck had done two decades earlier, but only if the research objectives were reshaped,” Vagelos wrote in his 2004 autobiography"Medicine, Science and Merck," which he co-authored with Louis Galambos.

Pindaros Roy Vagelos was born in 1929 in Westfield, New Jersey, and Greek was the exclusive language of the house, he wrote. His father Herodotus later ran a Rahway luncheonette, where many of his customers were Merck employees. Vagelos got to know scientists while working the soda fountain.

He interned at Merck in 1951 and returned in the early 1970s as a consultant. He became head of research in 1975.

"He started a new way of looking for drugs," said Brown. "He developed the idea of targeted screening, where you would take a pure enzyme and screen a panel of candidate drugs against a pure molecule in a test tube, instead of in an animal."


Arthritis, Glaucoma


The process proved more efficient. Under Vagelos, Merck pushed out new drugs for cholesterol reduction, arthritis, bacterial infections and glaucoma. He was named CEO in 1985.

Regeneron was focused on degenerative diseases attacking the nervous system, such as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Vagelos pivoted the company away from nervous system conditions toward obesity, arthritis, asthma and allergies. It’s since brought four injection-based drugs to market: Eylea, Praluent for hypercholesterolemia, Arcalyst for autoinflammatory disorders and Zaltrap for metastatic colorectal cancer.