Leonard S. Schleifer, M.D., Ph.D.
Co-founder 1988Background
Leonard Schleifer is a neurologist who earned his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia before completing his residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital and joining the faculty at Cornell Medical College. In 1988, at the age of 31, he left academia to found Regeneron based on the conviction that neurotrophic factors could treat neurodegenerative diseases, a hypothesis that ultimately failed but taught him that the drug discovery platform was more valuable than any single therapeutic target. Schleifer's defining founding philosophy was the insistence that physician-scientists, not business executives, should control pipeline decisions, a governance model he has maintained for 37 years as board co-chair, president, and CEO.