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BILL^ CLARK/CQ^ROLLCALL/GETTYIMAGESarry Reid, who represented Ne-
vada in the upper chamber from
1987 to 2017, was diagnosed
with pancreatic cancer in 2018
and started chemotherapy that
July. He didn’t respond well. “I was so sick they
stopped the chemo” that October, he says. In July
2019, a scan of his liver showed that the cancer
had spread. That meant his only option was more
chemotherapy. Around the same time, Joe Ki-
ani, founder and CEO of Irvine, California–based
health IT company Masimo, met with Soon-
Shiong to discuss acquiring $50 million worth of
assets from NantHealth. During that initial meet-
ing, the conversation turned to Soon-Shiong’s
other projects, which later led Kiani to phone
the former senator. “I called up Harry and I said,
‘Look, I just left this meeting. This person could
have the cure. I don’t know if he does, but what do
you have to lose? Reach out to him and see what
happens,’ ” Kiani recalls.
Two weeks later, Soon-Shiong and a doctor
from NantKwest named Leonard Sender were
working with Reid, using treatments from Nant-
Kwest as well as Soon-Shiong’s ImmunityBio.
Those treatments aren’t yet officially approved
but were permitted under the FDA’s compas-sionate-use rules. Reid was treated with a com-
bination of Abraxane, NantKwest’s natural killer
cells and a drug from ImmunityBio called N-803,
which stimulates the immune system to produce
its own killer cells. Soon-Shiong compares it to
the “triangle offense” often employed by the Lak-
ers. In November 2019, Reid reported that his
scans were completely clear, showing no signs of
cancer. “I admire Dr. Soon-Shiong a great deal,”
he tells Forbes. “Both for what he’s done for me
personally and what he’s done for the health-care
delivery system in this country.”
Reid’s is an extraordinary story, as pancreat-
ic cancer remains one of the deadliest forms of
the disease. Within five years of diagnosis, it kills
some 90% of patients, accounting for 7% of can-
cer deaths globally. Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek,
who also suffers from pancreatic cancer, has re-
ceived the same treatment, as have two other un-
identified patients. But Sender cautions against
declaring a cure. “It’s too early to tell, because
this is a very nasty form of cancer,” he says. That’s
why NantKwest is now focused on a new ran-
domized clinical trial, he adds, which is looking
to recruit nearly 300 pancreatic cancer patients
with advanced forms of the disease. Those who
sign up will be given a course of treatment simi-
lar to the one Reid received.
As part of these treatments’ development,
Soon-Shiong has spent the past five years work-
ing with the National Cancer Institute. His com-
panies have a collaborative agreement with the
NCI involving several types of treatments, in-
cluding NK-92 and N-803, as well as some vac-
cines against two kinds of tumors. Dr. Jeffrey
Schlom, chief of the NCI’s laboratory of tumor
immunology and biology, recalls being in sync
with Soon-Shiong from the start. “At our first of-
ficial creative meeting, we presented our slides of
our approach,” he says. “And then he got up and
presented his approach, and they were almost
identical.” Schlom’s group has since published
in peer-reviewed journals 15 papers regarding
Soon-Shiong’s treatments, in both preclinical
and clinical settings.ince February, NantKwest and Im-
munityBio have redirected some
of their attention toward the coro-
navirus pandemic, using a num-
ber of weapons in their collective
arsenal. The first is a vaccine, based on the system
Soon-Shiong’s companies are developing for can-
cer, that has already shown positive results against
Covid-19 in a study involving mice. It’s also being
studied in monkeys as a part of the federal govern-
ment’s “Operation Warp Speed.” As for human tri-All Clear
Former Senator
Harry Reid, pictured
the same month he
began treatment
for pancreatic
cancer with Soon-
Shiong, says being
in remission a
few months later
was “kind of like a
miracle.”OCTOBER 20 20S
H