Patrick Soon-Sh­iong steps down as CEO of Nan­tK­west, a linch­pin of his 'Cancer Moon­shot'

Five years af­ter he took pub­lic what was then the most valu­able IPO in biotech his­to­ry, bil­lion­aire sur­geon Patrick Soon-Sh­iong is step­ping down as CEO of Nan­tK­west.

Soon-Sh­iong’s sud­den de­par­ture comes as Nan­tK­west adds a clin­i­cal-stage Covid-19 vac­cine ef­fort to the nat­ur­al killer im­munother­a­pies they’ve been de­vel­op­ing for years. He re­mains the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er and he’ll stay on as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, but he leaves be­hind a com­pli­cat­ed lega­cy and few tan­gi­ble re­sults from a com­pa­ny that briefly cap­tured the at­ten­tion of many in and out­side of biotech. Richard Ad­cock, for­mer CEO of Ver­i­ty Health Sys­tems and a long­time health­care — al­beit not biotech — ex­ec­u­tive, will take over the helm.

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