About Roy Vagelos
Roy Vagelos, former CEO and chairman of Merck and former chairman of Regeneron, has continued to speak publicly about his career and the pharmaceutical industry. In a September 2024 interview, he discussed Merck's decision in 1987 to donate ivermectin free of charge to treat river blindness, stating that the company made the drug available to anyone in the world for as long as it was required. He also described a program in which Merck trained Chinese scientists and engineers to manufacture a recombinant hepatitis B vaccine, with the company making no profit from the effort. Vagelos has also commented on drug pricing, saying in a 2017 forum that he is not opposed to high prices for drugs that provide significant value, such as a hepatitis C cure, but criticized price increases after launch, citing Gleevec's rise from $26,000 to $146,000. He has advocated for transparency in pricing and for price increases to be tied to inflation.
Vagelos has also reflected on his approach to drug discovery, emphasizing the importance of understanding basic science and disease mechanisms. In a 2020 fireside chat, he said that scientific leaders should find intersections where new science reveals something about a disease and technology exists to affect that molecule. He noted that during his tenure at Merck, he was closely involved with research even as CEO, and that the company's decision to stop clinical studies of lovastatin for two years after a rumor of tumors in animals was driven by a commitment to patient safety. Vagelos has also discussed the role of financial incentives in the industry, stating in a 2020 interview that while profit is important, the industry must be careful not to reduce pricing to a point where people lose interest in drug development.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Roy Vagelos's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Narrator0:05
It's my great honor and privilege to present our next inductee, Dr. P. Roy Vagelos. Dr. Vagelos is the most purpose-driven leader I've ever known or had the good fortune to work with. Foremost, Roy is a man of science coupled with strong business acumen. Roy has dedicated his life to improving people's health and well-being. Often ahead of his time, Roy was one of the earliest proponents of diversity, having promoted women and minorities to senior management positions in the 1980s, years before the word diversity became part of the business lexicon. Leaders across scientific and business sectors view Dr. Vagelos as a visionary and continue to be inspired by his legacy today. Now let's learn a little bit more about Roy. The son of Greek immigrants, Roy Vagelos worked in his family's small luncheonette in Rahway while in high school. There he served Merck researchers who encouraged him to pursue the sciences, which led him to the University of Pennsylvania, then to Columbia for his medical degree. From there he joined the National Institutes of Health, then Washington University, before returning to Rahway and Merck to lead drug discovery, eventually becoming chairman and CEO of the company. Under his leadership, Merck was named Fortune Magazine's America's Most Admired Corporation seven years in a row. Just as importantly, he led its push into social responsibility as it donated more than 4.4 billion doses of their drug Mectizan to help eradicate river blindness in 49 countries. His interest and expertise in medicine and public health is further demonstrated by his more than 100 scientific papers and membership in the National Academy of Sciences. He and his wife Diana have also been generous patrons to institutions where they received their education. From busboy to visionary leader, Jersey born and bred, Dr. Roy Vagelos, newest member of the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
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Roy Vagelos2:25
I would like to thank the people who selected me and my fellow inductees into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. We're all joining a great group of people and I'm very honored. I grew up in Westfield, my family moved to Rahway where we had a small restaurant, essentially in the shadow of Merck. Our customers were largely people who worked at Merck, scientists, engineers, staff people, and I listened to them talk excitedly about their work with antibiotics at that time. They suggested when I was considering college that I learn chemistry, so I went to college and worked in chemistry, then went to medical school at Columbia University. My first job was really taking care of patients with heart disease, but I quickly changed into research because I was very interested in causes of disease. I began working in biochemistry. I then moved from the National Institutes of Health to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. My first real job was at Merck in 1975. I was called and invited to become head of the research group and lead drug discovery. One of our big projects was to find a drug that reduced blood cholesterol, and our research team was terrific in coming up with the statins. The statins were shown to reduce death from heart attack and strokes. That's pretty good for cardiovascular disease. Everybody was very excited. We also worked on drugs that were against parasitic diseases, and one of those was found to be Mectizan, which was again identified by our research group. Mectizan was capable of controlling river blindness, an infectious disease in the developing world, especially sub-Saharan Africa. These little microscopic worms would get into you, transmitted by a black fly, and then these parasites would go into your skin, causing terrific itching, but also get into the eyes and cause blindness. So it was known as river blindness because the black flies lived along the rivers. Our drug was terrific in controlling this disease, but the people who needed it were very poor. For that reason, Merck decided to donate the drug in 1987, contributed the drug free to anyone who needed it anywhere in the world. By 2015, Merck was contributing free treatment to 250 million people per year, with the objective to eradicate river blindness globally. That's the kind of thing a company like Merck can do. I must say Merck went on to make many new drugs in that era and still does today. The reason that New Jersey does so well is that they have much research and development by pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and they'll take one disease after another. Good luck to the future. I'm delighted to have spent most of my career in New Jersey. New Jersey is the home of the pharmaceutical industry in this country. It was before and it is today. Research that's done in both pharmaceutical and biotech companies in this state is very important for correction of problems in health and discovery of future diseases, especially the neurodegenerative diseases which are still very resistant, but they're going to be solved as well, just as all the other diseases that have been covered by the industry. New Jersey is the place to do it.
