Profit-based philanthropy

Millions sown
Galina Kostina, Expert magazine No. 43-2010

Alexander Chikunov decided to help humanity with more than sixty million dollars. No one has yet laid out such sums for projects at such an early stage in Russia

Alexander Chikunov has been in business for twenty years: in the early 1990s he was one of the builders of the stock market in Russia, in particular in Novosibirsk, and then held several senior positions there. But he couldn't sit in Novosibirsk, he wanted the scale that only Moscow could give, as it seemed to him at the time. Leonid Melamed, an acquaintance of Alexander Chikunov, then noted that these impulses were more than ever useful. In RAO UES, where Melamed worked, large-scale reforms were being initiated. And a person was needed for one of the high positions – the head of the center for the implementation of reform projects, from the outside, but reliable. Chikunov was coming up. He jokes that a sign could be hung on it: "A born executive, a perfectionist, always does what he plans." He kept his image in RAO: first he drew up a plan, completed it in three years, and in 2005 he headed the so-called Business Unit No. 1 of RAO UES (a kind of coordinating center), which he also managed very successfully. In general, he was such an almost exemplary manager of a very high rank, whose portrait can be safely inserted into textbooks for future managers. In the summer of 2008, the reform of RAO UES was completed, Anatoly Chubais, according to rumors, was going to Rosnanotech, where Melamed had already left, and Chikunov thought about the meaning of life. Along the way, however, he was engaged in an investment fund for energy, but there was a crisis in the yard, and the crisis was maturing in his soul.

He was worried. On the one hand, I'm used to being a workaholic, rushing somewhere every morning, solving problems and coming home late in the evening, and rushing again in the morning, and so every day, like a squirrel in a wheel, so that everything is beautiful in its own way - on schedule, on time, productively, efficiently, profitably. On the other hand, this running in the wheel began to annoy Chikunov slowly. He was called to lead various companies, where he would continue his usual running in the same way. Many people have moments in their lives when they want, according to Vysotsky, to get out of the rut and do something completely different from the profile, but not many people dare to do it. Alexander was ready to jump out of the rut, but could not decide where. He even attracted psychologists to his mental maeta so that they could help find the answer to the question: what next?

Psychologists forced Chikunov to dig into himself and return to childhood. There, as a child, he found the answer he was looking for. "We didn't dream of being a CEO as a child. Although modern children may already dream of a place in the Forbes rating. I dreamed about space, about discoveries, about victory over all diseases – in general, about something big and great that would concern all mankind. Why then do we forget everything and become so petty?" – Alexander is surprised. Another powerful incentive was the book by the founder of the Club of Rome Aurelio Peccei, who called on humanity to become more mature, to release the dormant ability to understand and create a decent society.

To take your breath awayChikunov told Chubais about his desire to join the universal tasks, who called his moods retirement.

However, Anatoly Borisovich did not forget about these sentiments and, already being the head of Rusnano, advised Chikunov to take a closer look at one project at Moscow State University. It was about the project of Academician Vladimir Skulachev.

Skulachev, of course, fascinated Alexander. In his manner of an excellent storyteller, he spoke quietly about evolution, about man's place in it, about the clock ticking in the genome, counting down the century, and about the audacity of the individual's rebellion against these inexorable ticks. "For the first time I felt how breathtaking it was," Alexander recalls, "as if a string was singing inside. If everything is really as Skulachev says, if aging is a program embedded in the genome, and it can be canceled, this is a great revelation. Skulachev warned that he might be wrong in his hypothesis, but the desire to believe is much greater than the mind. The mind is superficial, rational, critical. If it led to the right decisions, would there be so much turmoil and injustice in the world?"

Acquaintance with Skulachev finally confirmed the not quite clear plans of the former businessman to direct forces and funds to global projects of importance. Hence the first of only three requirements imposed by Chikunov on projects. They should be truly breakthrough, unusual, such as you feel in your gut or soul, from which your heart starts beating faster. The second criterion is that a decent person should be behind the project, for whom the main thing is scientific truth, and not the desire to fool the investor. The third is the significance for humanity (creating something very useful or preventing a universal threat).

To implement his plans, Alexander Chikunov created the Rostock group last year, where the team, according to the managing director of the group Dmitry Khan, gathered organically: as a new function appeared, a person appeared who not only had knowledge about finance, management or something else, but, most importantly, would be ideologically suitable. "And it's not difficult," says Khan, "firstly, the idea is high, and secondly, Chikunov is charismatic and able to infect anyone with enthusiasm. I have been working in the banking sector for many years, and I had no idea that I would be doing something like this."

And then Chikunov asked Academician Skulachev to invite famous scientists to brainstorm on the topic of what tasks are in the "hot top" of the world life sciences. After this workshop, two more projects emerged. "Evgeny Rogaev is a world–renowned geneticist,– says Chikunov. "And now is the time for revolutionary discoveries in biology and medicine thanks to new genomic technologies."

The first conversations between Chikunov and Rogaev looked something like this:

– Why did you go to America?
– I haven't left, I work in Massachusetts, but also in Moscow.
– What are you missing here?
– Sequencer.
– How much does it cost?
– Two million dollars.
– And if I buy you this thing?
– And why do you need this?

It took six months to convince the scientist that there was no catch. It was hard for Rogaev to believe that someone would buy the most powerful sequencer in the world and demand nothing in return, just ask him to do his genomics. "Rogaev told me that he has been searching for the genes of Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia for many years. He has already discovered some genes, but not all. However, it seems to him that he is somewhere close," says Chikunov, "Billions are being thrown at Alzheimer's in America, I didn't even believe that we could invest about 10 million and have a chance to break through in this direction. It's fantastic!" Evgeny Rogaev, however, did not give any guarantees. And persistently asked: "And if it doesn't work out? And if there are no patents? And if only an article in Nature?" Chikunov replied: "So I will lose money. But I will be proud that I had a hand in such a humane task, I'm not afraid of this word." Rogaev eventually agreed and said: "Probably, something really began to change in the country." Chikunov was even offended: "Why in the country? It was just lucky that we met in time and coincided."

The string in his heart sang again when he met Alexey Ryazanov. Our biologist works at the University of New Jersey, actively cooperates with the US National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Aging and other organizations. He conducts numerous experiments on worms and mice, trying to identify mutations and mechanisms that lead to aging.

"He proposed an absolutely crazy experiment," says Chikunov. – To screen fifty thousand known chemical compounds for how they will affect aging and prolong life. And it will cost only a hundred million dollars, whereas pharmaceutical companies spend several billion on one pill. Companies conduct screening for a specific target. And here Ryazanov turned everything upside down: not on a specific disease, but in a system to check these thousands of substances, what they will affect. They tell him: it's unscientific, it's nonsense. And I like this idea precisely because of its delirium." Chikunov did not have a hundred million for the project, but after consulting with Ryazanov, they decided that they could shrink to 10 million and carry out the first stage in three years, screening about a thousand compounds.

Humanitarian and potentially commercialA superficial look at the projects collected at the call of the string in Chikunov's heart allows us to conclude that they are deeply costly, and they practically do not smell of commercialization prospects.

That's right, Chikunov agrees. American venture capitalists, with whom he recently met, said that his projects are very, very early, that is, at that early stage, where the venture capitalist will not even look. "I don't want to be called either a venture investor or a business angel," says Chikunov. – These are all American terms. I call myself the helper of those who want to help humanity. Maybe I'm a philanthropist?"

Probably, he is a philanthropist in cases when he invests money in some scientific groups or in individual scientists for purely fundamental work, without allocating them to separate projects. One of his proteges is Alexey Olovnikov, a well–known predictor of the existence of the end sections of chromosomes – telomeres in the scientific world. In one of the conversations a few years ago, Olovnikov complained to the correspondent of the "Expert" that to confirm his hypothesis about telomeres and telomerase, he lacked several inexpensive experiments that no one wanted to go to. It is known how it ended: Others received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of telomeres and telomerase. Now Olovnikov has developed another hypothesis. The Rostock group is interested in it, and Chikunov helps the scientist.

The story could be moving to tears. But in fairness, I must say that Chikunov admits that any deeply fundamental project can have a commercial perspective. It's just that the horizon may be closer or further away. The first stage of the Skulachev Ions project, in which the foundation invests $ 40 million, assumes the release by 2013 in Russia, and by 2017 - in the world of drops from eye diseases of aging based on the mitochondrial antioxidant SkQ1, invented by Vladimir Skulachev, fighting free radicals. Now the Akademika company is conducting the second phase of clinical trials. The second part of the project, pills for old age, is really still at the earliest stage, but already in preclinical trials. If everything goes well, it will be completed in six to ten years. And if such a pill appears, it will be a phenomenal success.

"As for the Ryazan project, I am simply convinced that in the process of such an unprecedented screening of compounds, several candidate hits for pills will definitely pop up," Chikunov continues. "By selling them to pharmaceutical companies, we will be able to earn some good money." In general, there is a purely commercial project – the foundation bought a small American biotech company, Longica, created with the participation of Alexey Ryazanov, which develops a drug that protects healthy cells during chemo and radiotherapy of cancer. The drug is currently undergoing preclinical trials.

Even the purely fundamental Rogaev project of the Genomics Center may bear fruit in the distant future. "There are projects that will not have a commercial component in the near future," says Evgeny Rogaev. "If we, for example, sequence the genome of a long–lived organism, it will be interesting from a scientific point of view, but potentially interesting for commerce, although not immediately." Evgeny Rogaev has already discovered genes in which mutations inevitably lead to Alzheimer's at an earlier age than is usually the case. And this means that now there is a search for a drug that will solve the problem of suppressing the excessive formation of amyloid plaques that lead to the disease in this mechanism.

And if Rogaev is the first in the world to come up with a substance that fights not with the consequences, but with the cause of Alzheimer's, or solves the still unsolvable task of fighting schizophrenia – it will be cooler than an article in Nature: both the Nobel Prize and fabulous incomes shine here. Why not dream?

There is a commercial component even in the project Delta Alternative, which is purely humanitarian at first glance. "Many years ago I met an amazing person who made a scientific discovery and formulated new knowledge about the causes of sciatica," says Chikunov. – Dr. Andrey Nekrasov reverses our idea of how to behave in order not to destroy the spine. We walk wrong, we sit wrong, we exercise wrong." Alexander Chikunov said that he did not want to announce this project in detail in advance, because a book is being prepared, which will be published in several languages, and a center will open where both patients and doctors will be trained.

Selecting beautiful and unusual projects, following intuition and excitement, Chikunov does not look at all like an exalted landowner who supports the first tenor she likes. After all, he is a born manager, he is already well immersed in the topic, he sees projects in space and the paths that need to be followed.

Well aware of the risks of projects, scientists have repeatedly asked Chikunov how much money he has in general. The question is not idle, because one oligarch at the time of the financial crisis simply stopped financing the Skulachev project. Chikunov goes away from a direct answer, answering: we have enough will and money until 2013 to complete what we started without expanding. And if the money runs out, I'll find a way to make money. This is absolutely for the worst case. Now Chikunov is trying to attract capital in the amount of about $ 100 million to these and other projects. "We are open to everyone," he says, "to oligarchs, business angels, venture funds, even to the state." By the way, there is already a partnership with the latter. Skulachev's project was approved by Rusnano, which will invest 710 million rubles in it.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru01.11.2010