A neigh­bor­ly vis­it turns in­to a bid­ding war: How Dan Skovron­sky se­cured Eli Lil­ly's lat­est $1B buy

Dan Skovron­sky was a year in­to his job as CSO of Eli Lil­ly when, on a trip to New York, he stopped in­to the of­fices of the new neu­ro start­up that had set up shop one door over from the Big Phar­ma’s Man­hat­tan head­quar­ters.

Skovron­sky had come in on a mis­sion to shake up Lil­ly’s R&D, bet­ting on big­ger projects ear­li­er, and he knew neu­ro­science: Be­fore Lil­ly bought the biotech, he was CEO of Avid Ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, which de­vel­oped the first di­ag­nos­tic for be­ta amy­loid in Alzheimer’s pa­tients. Found­ed by famed neu­ro­sci­en­tist Asa Abe­liovich, backed with a rapid in­fu­sion of cash and stuffed with am­bi­tious but still nascent plans, Pre­vail fit his strat­e­gy.

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