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COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
Vision Quest
Through decades of research, Dr. George Yancopoulos ’80 oversees numerous
drug advances — including a breakthrough in one to treat eye disease
B y Dav i d McKay W i l s o n
Dr. George Yancopoulos ’80, ’86 GSAS, ’87
P&S seemed to have it all in spring 1987.
With his newly minted doctorate in
biochemistry and molecular biophysics
in hand, he’d accepted a faculty post at
P&S and had won a coveted $2 million
award from the Lucille P. Markey Charitable
Trust to support his research across
eight years.
But the Columbia research labs had yet to be built and the
timetable for their completion kept shifting. Through research circles
in biotechnology’s early days, he’d met Dr. Leonard Schleif er,
an enterprising neurologist intent on using gene technology to
regenerate neurons — the impulse-conducting cells that serve
as the functional unit of the nervous system.
The company was named Regeneron, and Schleifer wanted
Yancopoulos to be its founding scientist.
“Len was a very ambitious, big-thinking kind of guy who was
charismatic, honest and genuine,” says Yancopoulos, who received
a 2013 John Jay Award for distinguished professional achievement
from the College in March. “We really hit it off.”
At the time Schleifer approached him, Yancopoulos, the son
of Greek immigrants, was hearing little cheering around the Sunday
dinner table in Queens about his career in academic scientific
research. His father, Damis George Yancopoulos, who patched together
a living at jobs that ranged from furrier to insurance salesman,
reminded his son that the grant covered the laboratory’s
equipment as well, leaving him with a relatively modest salary.
“I thought I’d hit the big time,” says Yancopoulos of his academic
prospects. “I thought my father would finally be proud of me.”
His father, however, had a different path in mind for his firstborn
son and namesake, the valedictorian at Bronx Science as
well as the College. Perhaps it was in the private sector, putting
his scientific talents to use healing patients, one at a time, as a
physician. Or he could continue his research in a corporate pharmaceutical
lab, discovering drugs that would alleviate human
suffering for millions. His son might even earn a fortune.
George’s father was always talking up Dr. P. Roy Vagelos ’54
P&S, also the son of Greek immigrants, who vaulted from academic
research to chief scientific officer of Merck & Co., and later was
the Big Pharma giant’s CEO. He’d often clip articles about Vagelos
from Greek newspapers to send his son, detailing how Greece was
proud that the Merck executive had made it big, very big.
“My dad knew scientists didn’t make much money, and he
wanted to educate his son to make money,” says Yancopoulos.
“He’d read about Roy Vagelos, and he told me, ‘Why don’t you
be like Roy Vagelos’ When I hit a rough spot in grad school, he
told me, ‘Just call Roy Vagelos, he’ll help you out.’”
Yancopolous never called Vagelos. But his father’s advice was
present in his mind following his meetings with Schleifer, as he designed
his post-doctoral life. It was settled. He turned down the $2
million Markey award. He turned down the Columbia faculty position.
And he joined Schleifer as Regeneron’s founding scientist.
“I gave up eight years of guaranteed funding for a company
that at the time was located in Len’s apartment on the Upper East
Side,” says Yancopoulos, who now is president, Regeneron Laboratories.
“It was a convergence of things
— meeting Len, my dad pushing me and
my intrigue in building something from
scratch. If it didn’t work out, I figured I
could try my hand at the academic track.”
With both a medical degree and a doctorate,
Yancopoulos was armed with the
skill set essential for successful drug discovery.
He had the advanced knowledge
of science, honed in Columbia’s research
laboratories. He also had the keen understanding
of disease, developed at P&S,
which opened his eyes to the unmet medical
needs that could be addressed through
(opposite) As Regen -
eron’s founding
scientist, Dr. George
Yancopoulos ’80,
’86 GSAS, ’87 P&S
led the team that
created EYLEA, a
drug used to treat
age-related macular
degeneration, the
leading cause of
vision loss in older
people.
PHOTO: BEDFORD
PHOTO-GRAPHIC
pharmaceuticals. By 1989, Yancopoulos, Schleifer and two other
Regeneron employees moved into 10,000 sq. ft. of lab space in the
former Union Carbide complex in Tarrytown’s Eastview section,
about 22 miles north of Morningside Heights.
Twenty-four years later, Regeneron has emerged as New
York’s largest biotechnology company, with 2,000 employees,
up from 1,000 in 2009. Its campus of offices
and laboratories now sprawls over close to 590,000 sq.
ft. in Tarrytown, and a trophy case in Regeneron’s lobby highlights
its meteoric rise. In 2011, Crain’s New York Business celebrated
Regeneron as one of the New York area’s fastest-growing
public companies. Another honor came in September 2012 from
Science magazine, which named it the world’s best employer in
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