The Magnificent Obsession of Mike Milken

If I asked you to pick one person who is most responsible for the remarkable progress we've seen in the cancer drug development arena in the last 25 years, who would you choose? 

Here are ten of my top candidates for that honor:

Jim Allison, the father of modern immunotherapy;  Carl H. June, one of the pioneers of CAR T-cell research;  Dennis Lo, who detected fetal cfDNA in the blood and introduced the first commercially available liquid biopsy assay;  and Steve Rosenberg, whose hard work led to the world’s first gene therapy that deployed the body’s immune system to fight cancer.

There are also Gwen Nichols, a renowned physician, researcher and chief medical officer at the Leukemia and Lymphoma who plays a critical role in advancing cures;  Michala Short, for her compassion toward patients as well as her work establishing Australia’s first proton therapy center;  and Mark Kaminski, the hematologist and researcher who co-developed Bexxar, a radio-immunotherapy that saved my life.  There are also Dr. Jian Zhou, the inventor of the cervical cancer vaccine;  Bert Vogelstein, the first scientist to explain the molecular basis of a common human cancer;  And Jennifer Doudna, whose work could make ultra-precise edits to DNA in cells and potentially cure cancer and more.

Those are ten of my personal heroes. But as much as I admire each of these men and women, there is one person who outshines even these bright stars. The Most Valuable Player in the cancer arena over the last three-plus decades is unquestionably Mike Milken. The more you learn about what he has done nationwide and worldwide, the more I think you will agree. 

Mike’s work in fact extends to all life-threatening diseases, not just cancer. In a recent WSJ op-ed (linked here), he refers to heart disease, polio, AIDS, Covid, infectious diseases, Alzheimer’s, hereditary conditions, and more.

But this story is focused on his work in the cancer world. And it is extraordinary. I generally avoid hackneyed descriptions like “larger than life” when describing someone in print. But Mike (he prefers Mike) really is. He's dramatically changed the cancer drug landscape. 

Mike is not a doctor. He is a financier, medical research innovator, cancer survivor, writer and devoted family man. And he has has somehow managed to bring the once-fractured cancer sector together. 

That includes pharma and biotech, academia, regulators, politicians, advocates, patients, all coming together in ways that we have never seen before. They are breaking bread and breaking the mold. Yes, it's still competitive. But the landscape has changed dramatically for the better thanks to Mike. 

The New Book Takes You Inside His World

Mike Milken

In his brilliant new book, Faster Cures: Accelerating the Future of Health, which you can purchase here, Mike takes us behind the curtain to show us just how he took on this enormous challenge. 

 

The book details the work he has done to get all the players in the cancer sector on the same page so that they can move cancer research forward. 

 

“It seemed crazy,” Mike writes. “These doctors held patients’ lives in their hands, yet they had an incomplete picture of the disease without the benefit of expertise from other institutions."

He goes on to say that the physicians and scientists at various elite centers viewed one another as competitors, not collaborators. “They were all drawing from the same small pool of grant money, and they were all trying to attract revenue-producing patients,” he writes.

“It reminded me of when I coached my kids’ soccer games. The biggest challenge was getting the youngsters to stay in position and cooperate as a team rather than everyone running to where the ball is. Too many medical researchers were running after the same scientific ball and not communicating with each other.”

Mike infiltrated the entrenched, isolated cancer "camps" and brought them together to expedite the development of lifesaving cancer modalities and get them to the public. His work has changed the world.

In the book, he shares personal stories about his childhood and what motivated him to become a global cancer warrior. The book works both as a ruminative autobiography (with co-writer Geoffrey Evans Moore) and a primer of how one man really can change an industry.

While many people are aware that Mike runs and hosts the Milken Institute, the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that helps people build meaningful lives, I'd guess that only a small handful of people know just how much he has done for the cancer community.

The Impossible Dream

Mike’s Quixotic dream of speeding up the process of drug development has been his mantra for 50 years. He's succeeded to the point where Fortune describes him as "the man who changed medicine." 

A pragmatic dreamer, he is a gentle but relentless advocate. He's very smart, and keenly aware that the only way to pursue this is to be non-partisan. But he has little patience for the way some research institutions act like sports teams carefully guarding their playbooks so their “opponents” won't know what they are  doing. Collaboration is the only way to move forward, he says.

It's hard to accurately quantify just how much he has given because there has been such an overwhelming ripple effect throughout the entire oncology world from his work. But thanks to Mike, even staunch and sometimes hostile competitors have come together. 

Cancer drug development is an arduous and expensive endeavor from the time a scientist has a notion in the lab to the clinical trial stages to FDA approval to manufacturing to marketing the product. But it's gotten much easer and more streamlined thanks to Mike. 

CaP CURE

His mission actually started in the 1970’s with a few programs to advance drug development. But he knew there was so much more to do. As he writes in the book, he decided in the early 1990's that the cancer universe needed a complete overhaul. It was time to roll up the sleeves and get to work.

His resolve would lead to the formation of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, Melanoma Research Alliance, and ultimately FasterCures. By March 1993, Mike had come up with a new name for his organization: CaP CURE. 

The “Ca” stood for all cancers, he explains. The the “P” stood for prostate. And “CURE” was for all diseases. And he was inspired to fund young scientists. 

 

For nearly 50 years, Mike has advanced the careers of more than 600 early career researchers. “We call them young investigators, or YI’s,” Mike writes. “They work in two dozen countries."

Mike has connected with thousands of medical and scientific experts worldwide. He came up with this list of principles:

• Focus on the career paths of these young physicians.
• Focus on collaboration in place of competition.
• Build cross-sector ties.
• Identify the most promising research not funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
• Eliminate needless bureaucracy.
• Relinquish intellectual property rights in exchange for speed and administrative costs.
• Supplement traditional therapies with proven alternative concepts. Generate public awareness.
• Educate members of Congress.
• Assure other disease groups that we were a resource, not a threat.
• Act with urgency.

These are just some of the organizations Mike has created. Each one is doing stellar work and is worthy of your support:

Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream (MCAAD)
The Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream believes anyone with a dream, and the drive to achieve it, should have the opportunity to make it come true— through expanding access to education, health, and economic freedom, and by unleashing the power of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Milken Institute
A non-profit, non-partisan economic think tank whose scholars lead an international dialogue on solutions in the areas of economics, health, aging, human capital, philanthropy and capital markets.

FasterCures
This Washington, D.C.-based think tank is removing barriers to progress against all life-threatening diseases.

Milken Family Foundation
Established in 1982, the Foundation is one of America's leading charitable organizations supporting education and a broad range of medical research.

Bioscience/Public Health
Major recent initiatives include the Milken Institute’s COVID-19 Treatment and Vaccine Tracker, and the biggest health initiative -- The Milken Institute School of Public Health.

Milken Scholars Program
The Milken Scholars Program provides outstanding high school students with a commitment of four years of college financial assistance, counseling, volunteer opportunities and preparation for graduate studies and beyond.

Melanoma Research Alliance
The MRA has awarded approximately $123 million to medical investigators in 18 countries focused on accelerating new therapeutic approaches for melanoma, improving existing treatments, developing new biomarkers and advancing understanding of risk factors. Since 2007, the FDA has approved 13 new melanoma treatments.

Prostate Cancer Foundation
The world's largest philanthropic source of funds for prostate cancer research, the Prostate Cancer Foundation is helping reduce the death rate from one of the most common cancers.

Other Non-Profit Activities
Mike's five decades of philanthropy include many other programs in medical research, public health and education.

 

Immunotherapy Has Come of Age

 

Meanwhile, it’s fitting and poetic that just as Mike’s book was released, Moderna and Merck announced the results of a Phase 2 clinical trial that combines Moderna’s personalized mRNA cancer vaccine and Merck’s blockbuster immunotherapy drug Keytruda for people with melanoma.

In the trial, which I wrote about this week for Healthline, the drug-vaccine combination reduced the risk of death or recurrence of melanoma, the most deadly type of skin cancer, by 44% compared with Merck’s immunotherapy Keytruda alone.

Several immunotherapies have made their way from the lab to the clinic, largely because of Mike’s support. Keytruda, for example, the checkpoint inhibitor, is now approved for more than a dozen types of cancer. I've written about Keytruda extensively.

And now the world is getting the first look at what can happen when you combine an immunotherapy with a personalized cancer vaccine. This is the future of cancer medicine, right here, right now. 

The next step of course is a Phase 3 trial, which could lead to a new option for people with melanoma. This is just the beginning of the cancer vaccine combination.

Moderna is of course the company that saved countless lives during the pandemic. 

Personalized medicine is just beginning to blossom. 

Throughout this magnificent obsession of Mike's, he has been consistent and unwavering. And to his credit, he has always been especially enamored of immunology. He is fascinated with the science of getting your own body to fight the cancer. 

Mike was convinced that this could be a game-changing medicine decades before the world began to open their eyes and minds to the idea that we have an immune system. I, too, was an early believer in immunology. 

From a young age, I instinctively believed that we all have an immune system. In late 1996, I was diagnosed with stage IV non-Hodgkin’s follicular lymphoma. My oncologist told me I would be lucky to live three years. But I had other plans. 

I was originally treated with a type of chemotherapy called CHOP. It was rough. It gave me a remission. But two and a half years later I was back in the trenches. 

This time, I took charge of my situation. First thing I did was get a new oncologist, who was much kinder and far more open-minded about my desire to enroll in a clinical trial. I looked far and wide for any and all potential treatments, including trials. I chose to enroll in a Phase 3 trial of a drug called Bexxar, a so-called radio-immunotherapy.

 

Bexxar was a monoclonal antibody linked with radioactive iodine I-131. Monoclonal antibodies are built to target and destroy only certain cells in the body. At the time, the drug, which was used to treat certain forms of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, was usually given after other medications had been tried without successful treatment.

Bexxar not only put me back into remission and saved my life, it cured me. I have many friends who were also cured by that drug. But it was sadly shelved by Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) for all the wrong reasons.

The drug company didn’t effectively market the drug and they clearly didn’t think it was going to be financially advantageous to continue offering this remarkable medicine. I was heartbroken with the drug was scrapped. Because it works.

GSK scientists have certainly done some very good things. But this decision was wrong on all kinds of levels. I have written extensively about Bexxar in Newsweek, where I proudly spent 23 years as a national correspondent, and International Business Times, and The Reno Dispatch news blog you are reading, and many other publications.

I still believe we should resurrect Bexxar and its sister medication, Zevalin, which is also a radio-immunotherapy that showed very good results with minimal side effects. These are both safe and effective medicines that were poorly marketed and underutilized. Perhaps they arrived too soon.

 

Thanks again, Mike

As a fellow cancer survivor, I thank you again for all you have done for the national and global cancer communities. If you ever need me for anything, please do not hesitate to ask.