Harvard professor Timothy Springer first made headlines in 2020 when a biotech company he had invested in—Moderna—suddenly became a household name thanks to its Covid-19 vaccines, sparking a stock rally that turned him into a billionaire. Now, he’s set to receive a nine-digit windfall from pharma giant Eli Lilly’s $3.2 billion acquisition of Morphic Holding, a biotech firm that Springer founded in 2014.
Eli Lilly announced Monday that it would acquire the Waltham, Massachusetts-based company for $57 in cash per share. Springer currently owns about 16% of Morphic’s stock, meaning he stands to receive some $435 million (pretax) when the deal closes in the third quarter of this year.
The announcement led to a surge in Morphic’s share price, which rose by 75% to $55.79 as of 2:45 pm Eastern on Monday. The sale price also marks a 280% gain for Springer since the firm went public at $15 a share in July 2019. Forbes estimates his net worth to be $2 billion as of Monday afternoon. Springer declined to comment for this story.
Morphic is developing oral drugs using proteins called integrins, which help cells attach to, and communicate with, other cells. The firm’s therapies could treat autoimmune diseases and serious chronic conditions ranging from inflammatory bowel disease to cancer. It’s this research that sparked Eli Lilly’s interest, particularly a small molecule inhibitor named MORF-057, which is currently in Phase 2 studies to treat ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.
“The trials for inflammatory bowel disease are very long and a major pharmaceutical partner was always a consideration,” Springer told Endpoints News on Monday. “Lilly’s bid was unexpected. The company was not put up for sale. Lilly only wanted the [MORF-057] program.”
Springer, 76, got a Ph.D. in molecular biology in 1976 and began teaching at Harvard the following year. He has carried out groundbreaking research ever since. His work as an immunologist led to the discovery of integrins and lymphocyte function-associated molecules in the 1980s, which formed the basis of a biotech outfit, LeukoSite, which he founded in 1993. Springer took it public in 1998 and sold it to Millennium Pharmaceuticals for $635 million a year later, netting $100 million in Millennium shares.
“My rigor in my science is validated by the fact that the results I have in my laboratory can be reproduced in the companies I found and be turned into drugs,” Springer told Forbes in 2020.
Besides Morphic and Moderna, Springer has founded or been an early investor in at least three publicly traded biotech firms, including RNA cell therapy firm Cartesian Therapeutics, therapeutic protein and antibody firm Tectonic Therapeutic and Scholar Rock, which develops therapies for serious diseases. His work on integrins also earned him the prestigious Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research award in 2022 alongside two other scientists.
“For Scholar Rock and Morphic, I’m a founder of those companies and I came up with the concepts for their creation as a scientist,” he told Forbes in 2020. “My philosophy is investing in what you know, and I’m a scientist at heart. I’m an active investor and also a very rigorous scientist.”
Morphic hasn’t been the only win for Springer this year. Tectonic Therapeutic, which Springer cofounded in 2019, merged with publicly traded Avrobio in June and also raised $131 million in a private placement. Springer invested roughly $19 million in Tectonic in June 2022 and another $42 million in January as part of the merger, bringing his stake up to 29%. That stake is now worth about $67 million.
He first backed Moderna, his best investment to date, in 2010 when he put about $5 million into the firm. Forbes estimates that his stake in the company, which isn’t publicly disclosed, is about 3%, and currently worth about $1.4 billion. Besides his investments, Springer is also an active philanthropist. He founded the Institute for Protein Innovation (IPI), a Boston-based nonprofit focused on researching protein science, in 2017, and he has donated at least $250 million to the institute over the years.
“I like active investing, but I also very much like active philanthropy,” he told Forbes in 2020. “My motivation behind [IPI] is not only to help develop new reliable antibodies that scientists around the world can use for biological discovery, but also new technology that will just allow many more discoveries to be made.”
