Patrick Soon-Shiong

Patrick Soon-Shiong, doctor and entrepreneur, has been hard at work building his NantWorks health empire. The company aims to connect all of a patient's health data and leverage it with genetic information to revolutionize the healthcare experience.



Investors have been drawn to the gambit: In July 2015 healthcare software firm Allscripts Healthcare Solutions invested $200 million into NantHealth, one of ten Nant subsidiaries, valuing it at $2 billion. Soon-Shiong took NantKwest, a cancer drugmaker, public in July, raising $200 million; he owns more than 50% of the company. The son of Chinese immigrants to South Africa, Soon-Shiong graduated from high school at age 16 and became a doctor at 23. After making a name for himself as a surgeon, he founded two drug companies in the U.S., Abraxis and American Pharmaceutical Partners, which he sold for a combined $9.1 billion between 2008 and 2010. He invented a cancer drug, Abraxane, which, after years of slow sales, is now a blockbuster thanks to its efficacy against pancreatic cancer. A member of the Buffett-Gates Giving Pledge, Soon-Shiong plans to give away at least half his fortune. He has donated $136 million to St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif. He owns a 4% stake in the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team.

Patrick Soon-Shiong is a South-African born American surgeon, medical researcher, businessman, philanthropist, and a professor at University of California, Los Angeles. He has an estimated net worth of $10.1 billion as of December 2015, according to Bloomberg.
Forbes also ranked him as the wealthiest American in the healthcare industry and in Los Angeles. He is most widely known for developing the metatastic breast cancer treatment drug. He is the current Chairman of the Chan Soon-Siong Family Foundation, and Chairman and CEO of the Chan Soon-Siong Institute for Advanced Health, National LambdaRail, the Healthcare Transformation Institute, and NantWorks, LLC. He is also the minority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers.
Patrick Soon-Siong was born on July 29, 1952 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa to Chinese immigrant parents, from Taishan in Guangdong, China, who fled during the World War II. At the age of 16, he graduated from high school. He received his medical degree at 23 from the University of Witwatersrand where he was fourth out of 189. After finishing his internship at Johannesburg’s General Hospital, he earned a Master of Science degree from the University of British Columbia. He was the first resident to receive multiple research awards simultaneously from the American College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and the American Association of Academic Surgery. He then moved to the United States and trained at UCLA where he became a board-certified surgeon. Dr. Soon-Shiong is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (Canada) and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
Dr. Soon-Shiong has built and then sold two successful drug companies. He took American Pharmaceutical Partnership (APP) public in 2001 and founded a new company, Abraxis, in 2007. In 2008, he sold APP for $6.5 billion to Germany’s Fresenius. In 2010, he sold Abraxis to Celgene for $2.9 billion. He founded NantWorks in 2011 and is working on the new cancer therapies. In 2012, Blackstone Group Invested $125 million for a stake at the NantPharma unit. As a philanthropist, he is a member of the Giving Pledge. His donations included $5million to the University of Chicago for the development of a technology to improve patient care and $136 million to St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California.