By Sari Staver AMN CORRESPONDENT

With $13 million in backing from some of the nation·'s shrewdest venture capitalists, 30-year-old Michael Rior-dan, MD, has launched Gilead Sci-ences, which is developing a new class of drugs to fight diseases such as AIDS or cancer.

Speaking before some 1,500 institu-tional investors attending the Ham-brecht and Quist annual health care conference in San Francisco last month, Dr. Riordan said the company, named for the biblical site of a healing balm, is the only one in the United States solely devoted to "genetic target-ing," a promising technique that selec-tively inhibits viral genes or oncogenes.

Although still unproven in humans, early laboratory experiments have con-vinced Dr. Riordan that genetic target-ing offers a "tremendous opportunity" to usher in a new generation of drugs to treat a wide variety of viral diseases and oncogene-derived cancers.

In an interview after his presenta-tion, Dr. Riordan declined to discuss specifics of any drug under develop-ment "it's proprietary information," - but says the company's "top three" priorities are the human immunodefi-ciency virus, hepatitis B, and cytomeg-alovirus. "I can't say any more" about when such agents could be in the mar-

. ketplace, he added. . A fast talker and quick thinker, Dr. Riordan made the transition from n1edicine to business without skipping a beat.

While an undergraduate biology/-chemical engineering student at Wash-ington U ., in St. Louis, Dr. Riordan was intrigued with the first recombi-nant DNA experiments. He selected

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Johns Hopkins U. Medical School "so I could spend all my elective time" in the molecular genetics and biology lab-oratories.

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AFTER medical school graduation; Dr. Riordan moved to Boston, where he simultaneously .enrolled in the Har-vard Business School and began work-ing as a management consultant for pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms. With 'his MBA in hand, Dr. Riordan worked briefly as a banker in Japan before launching his career as a venture capitalist with Menlo Ventures in Menlo Park, Calif.

With support from his partners at the venture capital firm, Dr. Riordan spent a year laying the groundwork for what he hoped would soon be his own company by visiting the laboratories of the leaders in the fledgling scientists. "Those frequent-flier miles came in handy" as he visited laboratories in Great Britain and ·France, he said.

After hearing Dr. Riordan's reports on genetic targeting and the commer-cial potential possible, Menlo Ventures gave the young physician $2 million to launch Gilead. "I believe that was an

. example of venture capital at its very finest," Dr. Riordan said of his f former partners' support. "They not only backed me, but had the clout to help me put it together."

Over several months, Dr. Riordan hired 16 employes to work in the Fos-ter City, Calif., laboratory, just outside San Francisco. With an $11-million

capital infusion in November, 1988, the firm recently moved into an 8,000-square-foot research and development facility, where it synthesizes analogs .with known anti-viral activity and de-velops new analogs with enhanced ac-tivity.

While he is the "boss" at his new company, Dr. Riordan sees the posi-tion differently. "I work for everyone else in the company to see that we per-form groundbreaking science, act shrewdly in business, and develop a new class of drugs. By combining or-

. ganic chemistry with molecular genet-ics, I believe we are making a major contribution to the life sciences."

PHOTOS: SARI STAVER/AMN

Michael Riordan, MD

AMERICAN MEDICAL NEWS/ FEBRUARY 3, 1989