Leonard S. Schleifer (born 1953) is an American businessman and is the co-founder and chief executive of the biotechnology company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.
He was born and raised in a Jewish family, the son of Florence and Charles Baker Schleifer,[1] in Queens, New York.
[2] Choosing not to accept Gilman's efforts to recruit him as an academic, he found a sponsor in George Sing, a venture capitalist at Merrill Lynch, and obtained $1 million in seed capital.
[2] After several years of trying to recruit research doctors many of whom preferred to work in academia or for large corporations, they developed their first drug to treat Lou Gehrig’s disease.
[2] The drug was a blockbuster generating $838 million in its first full year and sales increased 55% to $1.3 billion in 2013[3] making Schleifer a billionaire.
According to the "annual collaborative report" from Equilar and The New York Times, Schleifer ranked 15th in the May 2015 list of "200 highest-paid CEOs of large publicly traded companies."