Robert Langer.
Boston Globe via Getty ImagesFor the third time this year, a surge in the share price of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech outfit Moderna has minted a new billionaire. The latest newcomer to the three-comma-club is Robert Langer, a chemical engineering professor at MIT and a prolific scientist with more than 1,000 patents. His 3% stake in the company is now worth more than $1 billion.
Moderna shares rose nearly 7% on Thursday, the day after the company announced it had collected enough data from phase three trials of its Covid-19 vaccine to submit to an independent board for analysis. The news came three days after Pfizer released positive results from trials of its own Covid-19 vaccine, developed with German biotech company BioNTech, which uses messenger RNA technology similar to that used by Moderna.
Forbes estimates that Langer is worth about $1.1 billion, with his fortune largely made up of his Moderna shares as well as smaller holdings in publicly traded biotech startups including Frequency Therapeutics, SQZ Biotechnologies and Lyra Therapeutics. He follows in the footsteps of Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, worth $2.7 billion, and fellow professor and biotech investor Timothy Springer, worth $1.5 billion, who passed the billion-dollar mark as Moderna’s stock price soared in April and May.
“I’ve been privileged to have engaged with Moderna since its earliest days,” Langer said in an emailed statement to Forbes. “I was initially inspired by the promise of messenger RNA as the potential basis for a transformative platform for new medicines and vaccines. The promise is definitely being realized.”
It’s a decision that has served the scientist well — Moderna shares are up by more than 390% since the beginning of the year. Langer joined MIT as a professor of nutritional biochemistry in 1978 and later established the Langer Lab in the university’s department of chemical engineering, which he still leads today. The early investor in Moderna — which is headquartered across the street from Langer’s office in Cambridge — is an MIT graduate himself, having completed a doctorate in chemical engineering in 1974 after earning his bachelor's degree at Cornell.
Besides now holding a ten-figure fortune, he’s also a multiple prizewinner who’s estimated to be the most cited engineer in history, with more than 320,000 citations on Google Scholar and more than 1,500 articles published. His postdoctoral students at the Langer Lab have gone on to launch biotech firms of their own — such as SQZ Biotechnologies and Frequency Therapeutics, in which Langer owns stakes — with Langer assisting as an investor and board member.
Langer’s investment in Moderna is his most lucrative bet so far — and the professor has never wavered in his belief that the company’s ideas could succeed. “Beyond the promise of Moderna’s technology platform, I have also remained impressed by its committed leadership teams and staff,” he said. “So much so that I have not sold a single share of Moderna stock since the company’s founding.”
