John Martin in 2012 (Paul Sakuma/AP Images)

Biotech pi­o­neer and start­up in­vestor John Mar­tin, who built Gilead in­to a pow­er­house play­er, has died

John C. Mar­tin, who led Gilead to great­ness in de­vel­op­ing a huge­ly prof­itable HIV drug fran­chise, has died.

His death at the age of 69 was flagged by the com­pa­ny he built, though a spokesper­son for Gilead said the com­pa­ny didn’t know the cause of death.

“John’s lega­cy will be felt for gen­er­a­tions to come, liv­ing on through the sci­en­tif­ic progress made un­der his lead­er­ship and the pro­grams he cham­pi­oned that ex­pand­ed ac­cess to med­ica­tions for peo­ple around the world,” said Daniel O’Day, who took over as CEO af­ter Mar­tin and his close col­league John Mil­li­gan left Gilead a cou­ple of years ago. “On be­half of all of us at Gilead, I ex­tend our deep­est con­do­lences to John’s fam­i­ly.”

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