Mogul Pumps Millions into Finding Cure for Daughter’s Crippling Disease

A New York financier has put $100-million of his own money to date into a race to find a cure for a crippling genetic illness that struck his daughter, Bloomberg writes in a report on Dinakar Singh and other wealthy parents focused on disease philanthropy.

Mr. Singh, a former Goldman Sachs partner who now runs a hedge fund, started the Spinal Muscular Atrophy Foundation after his then-19-month-old daughter, Arya, was diagnosed with the condition, known as SMA, in 2001.

At the time there were no treatments for the disease, which causes deterioration of the nerve cells that control muscles, and drug companies were doing little about it, he said.

The foundation is working with Swiss pharmaceuticals Novartis on developing an SMA drug that could be ready for human testing in 2013 and pumping millions of dollars into other research on potential treatments.

Mr. Singh is one of a small band high-net-worth individuals, many from the world of Wall Street finance, with seriously ill children who have invested heavily in medical research, applying business principles in an effort to speed the search for treatments.

From The Chronicle’s archive: Read about another effort to speed disease research, founded by the financier Michael Milken.