June/July 2006
VOLUME 4•NUMBER 3

Cover Story
June/July 2006

Making Giant Leaps for MannKind
by Margie Anne Clark

““The greatest reward in life is seeing what you can do for other people,” says Al Mann, CEO and chairman of the board of MannKind Corporation, a diversified biopharmaceutical company which focuses on the development of novel therapeutics and drug delivery technologies for treatment of diabetes, cancer, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

Affable, handsome and charming as ever, Mann, a philanthropist, businessman and scientist whose extraordinary career has spanned decades of remarkable achievement, is the tour de force behind the Mann Biomedical Park in Valencia.

His greatest satisfaction comes from seeing smiles on people’s faces whose lives have been saved or dramatically improved through technology developed through his work with the Alfred Mann Foundation; Advanced Bionics Corporation (now a Boston Scientific Company), a leading producer of cochlear implants; MiniMed (now a Medtronic company), the leading producer of insulin pumps and glucose sensors; and Pacesetter Systems (now St. Jude Medical), a major producer of cardiac pacemakers. He also serves as Chairman of the Southern California Biomedical Council and is a Trustee of the University of Southern California.

“It is those experiences that lead me to do what I do and work as hard as I do at 80 years old,” beams the forever-young Mann, who took time out of his 24/7 schedule to share fascinating vignettes of his remarkable life-story with this equally fascinated reporter who caught up with Mann in his office in the Advanced Bionics Corporation building — one of many biomedical facilities located in the Mann Biomedical Park.

Making the commute from his home in Beverly Hills, Mann arrives at his office each day at 8 a.m. and it’s not unusual on occasion to find him at his desk at 6 a.m. He rarely leaves the office before 6:30 or 7 p.m.
“I take conference calls in the morning and take my briefcase home at night, and usually work another couple of hours after dinner. I’m 80 years old and work 80 hours a week,” admits Mann. Of course, that is when he is in town — he travels on business almost half the time.

The lush green landscape surrounding the Mann Biomedical Park is a favorite site of many local charity events.

“We like to open it up to folks,” notes Mann, who purchased the entire property — the old Lockheed top-secret “Skunk Works” — from Legacy Partners in 2002. “I wanted to acquire it so I could keep the open spaces,” he adds, noting that construction is underway on new buildings in an effort to consolidate many of his facilities at the park. Among his pride and joy, Mann points out his namesake, the new Alfred Mann Foundation building. “The goal of the Foundation is to improve the quality of life of people suffering from medical disabilities,” explains Mann. “I’ve been fortunate in my life to have generated a great deal of wealth through my companies and I want to see my wealth put to good use in helping others while I’m still alive and can see the benefits of the work. That’s what keeps me going.”

On the subject of the inventions by his companies, Mann displays a tiny BION neural and muscular stimulator attached to a key chain, which he pulls from his suit pocket. The device is the newest generation of neural and muscular stimulators that his Foundation and Advanced Bionics are developing together.
“The Foundation is advancing these exciting devices that are powered by rechargeable batteries so that they can communicate with each other through a wireless network,” Mann explains, noting that the highly advanced system will be able to restore complex control of paralyzed limbs through coordinated sensing and stimulation. “Clinical investigators are being recruited to research many of its potentials in areas of neurological and muscular impairments to enable this exciting technology to become available to the public,” he adds.

In one of his latest groundbreaking endeavors, Mann has created a team at Second Sight to develop a retinal prosthesis that will restore sight to the blind. Mann notes that the first model was intended just as a proof of concept with the hypothesis: could such a retinal stimulator produce useable sight?

“This system was never intended to be a commercial product,” says Mann, adding that six patients were implanted with the prosthesis. “The results were extraordinary. The patients gained significant visual benefits — far more than we expected,” he affirms, noting that the first human trials of a second-generation prosthesis are scheduled to begin in a few months with plans to commercialize that device.

Mann’s extraordinary career of discovery had its early beginnings in his hometown of Portland, Oregon where even as a youngster, Mann was already ahead of his time.

Excelling in mathematics beyond his years, Mann was promoted early through grade school and graduated from high school at the age of 15.
“I guess it made a mess of me,” jokes Mann. “I grew up in the days of the Great Depression before World War II. We didn’t have a lot of money, but my father owned a tiny grocery store and this helped put food on the table,” recounts Mann, who would often work by his dad’s side. He credits his parents for imbuing in him a strong work ethic.

Mann went on to complete two years at Reed College and Oregon State College. But the tides of World War II would change the course of Mann’s destiny.

At 17, Mann volunteered to serve his country, enlisting as an Aviation Cadet in the Army Air Corps — a precursor to the Air Force. At the age of 18 he was shipped to Santa Ana for his pre-flight training, ultimately becoming a navigator of a B-29. After the war, in 1946 Mann was discharged from the Air Corps and moved to California.

In 1947 he resumed his education, earning his BA and MS degrees in physics from the University of California at Los Angeles, with extensive graduate work towards a PhD in nuclear and mathematical physics. Under Textron’s sponsorship, Mann also attended an Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School.

While he was doing research for his PhD, he was recruited by Technicolor where he directed and pioneered research and development in the fields of electro-optical systems, instrumentation, radiation damage, optical physics, multi-layer thin film vacuum deposition, and digital and analog computer analysis from 1951 to 1956.

But the ebb and flow of war would once again affect the course of Mann’s future as well as that of his country. “The army came to me to see if my area of expertise could help them solve a problem in its development of an anti-tank missile system,” explains Mann. “I agreed to listen and give them a recommendation to solve the problem,” he adds, noting that the army then persuaded him to start a company to facilitate their needs.

“I started Spectrolab in 1956 after scraping together $3,000 plus $18,000 borrowed from my family,” recalls Mann. “Spectrolab solved that army problem and many more, and over the next few years its activities became rather diversified,” he adds, noting that Spectrolab is mostly known as the world’s leading supplier of highly reliable solar panels for space power systems.

Mann established Heliotek in 1960, a semiconductor company to produce certain high power semiconductor devices. It became the world’s major supplier of solar cells for spacecraft. Both Spectrolab and Heliotek were sold to Textron in 1960. Mann stayed with Textron until 1972. He had founded Pacesetter Systems, Inc. in 1969, which went on to become the number two cardiac pacemaker company — providing innovative and cutting edge implantable pacemaker technology for the treatment of bradycardia.
Thrilled with the improvement in the quality of life of patients who received his pacemaker products, Mann started a program within Pacesetter to develop insulin pumps to improve treatment of diabetes. Mann sold the pacemaker business to Siemens in 1985 and remained as CEO until 1992. Since 1995 Pacesetter has been the major part of St. Jude Medical.
The insulin pump business had been spun off in 1985 and later, two other product programs were added to this venture. In 1992 this enterprise was divided; the insulin pumps became MiniMed, the cochlear implants became Advanced Bionics, and a third product was acquired by Siemens. 
After establishing Advanced Bionics and MiniMed, Mann came across technologies for treating Type 2 diabetes and cancer. Of his desire to venture into pharmaceuticals after such a successful career in medical devices Mann is quick to say, “If you could play a role in curing cancer, wouldn’t you want to be involved?

“MannKind Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company is changing the paradigm for diabetes therapy and hopes to cure cancer,” asserts Mann noting that Mannkind is also developing vaccines for many types of cancer, with clinical trials set to begin later this year.

Now a public company, MannKind is also developing products to treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. For diabetes, MannKind has developed a new way to deliver insulin.

“We can actually provide insulin with such rapid kinetics that it behaves much like insulin from the pancreas,” explains Mann. “It’s an effect that’s never been achieved before with any therapy.” To use the new technology, the patient simply takes a puff at the beginning of a meal from a small device that fits into the palm of a hand.

“Indeed, the problems of insulin therapy have not been the insulin, but rather the kinetics resulting from the way the insulin has been delivered. Our system is much safer, is automatic, and is a less stressful treatment that virtually eliminates the risks of diabetes therapy and the complications,” says Mann.
As part of his ongoing effort to repay society for his great success, Mann’s major quest is to improve the transferring of vital technology from academia to industry. To make this happen, Mann recently appointed a special selection committee to spend time on 70 elite research campuses located in the United States and abroad on his behalf, from which he will choose 12 campuses to initially endow with $100 million each for the establishment of affiliated biomedical engineering institutes. The University of Southern California was the first of the beneficiaries, and its endowment has been increased to $162 million.

“It’s extremely gratifying to me to see people’s lives changed for the better and, with the vision and work of many talented people, we can continue to make a difference.”