A HISTORY OF CARING

That CSL promise is both old and young, delivered through more than a century of public health commitments and just three decades as an innovative biotech. It harkens back to the “serum therapy” that German scientist Emil von Behring (the namesake of CSL Behring) discovered in 1890 to protect against diphtheria and the mission to protect Australians from disease during World War I. In 1916, government-run Commonwealth Serum Laboratories began making life-saving serums, anti-toxins, and vaccines for a nation beset with medical shortages.

Brian McNamee, a medical doctor-turned-executive, knew he would need to take bold moves in privatizing CSL in 1994. Naysayers thought it wouldn’t be possible to grow a global biotech company from Australia.

Brian began by revamping research and development. With esteemed virologist Ian Gust as R&D head, CSL supported the work of Ian Frazer at the University of Queensland, who was developing a vaccine against human papilloma virus (HPV). CSL licensed Frazer’s technology and co-developed Gardasil, the world’s first vaccine against cervical cancer. (Pharma giant Merck produces Gardasil through a license with CSL.)

That high-impact work, along with key acquisitions, set the trajectory for CSL. When Brian stepped down in 2013, he saw that Paul had the right mix of personal and professional qualities for CSL’s next chapter. “We knew successfully launching differentiated products in the US market, and then globally, was a critical capability. And Paul was our strongest commercial person in the company,” Brian recalls.

Frankly, it wasn’t clear whether anyone could replicate Brian’s success. He steered the company from an initial share price of AUD76c (the readjusted base after a three-to-one split in 2007) to $53.24—acquiring ZLB (the blood plasma division of the Swiss Red Cross) and Aventis Behring, making CSL a world leader in plasma-derived products. He moved into recombinant therapies, positioning CSL for development of new technologies.

“Paul was just right in that point in time,” with the vision and attention to detail to take CSL to new heights, says renowned Australian molecular biologist John Shine, who served as chair of the CSL board from 2011 to 2018. “He was really the perfect CEO to take a well-established but rapidly growing company to the next level.”

In ten years, Paul grew the share price above AUD$300, annual R&D spending from US$370 million to US$1.15 billion, and grew the market capitalization nearly 5-fold to about AUD$145 billion, as CSL developed and commercialized breakthrough vaccines and therapies for patients with bleeding disorders, immune deficiencies, hereditary angioedema, and other disabling conditions.

Doctors told Perry Parker and his brother Corey that they could never play sports. They both lack a vital blood-clotting factor due to hemophilia, a rare genetic disorder, so even a minor injury could cause them to bleed uncontrollably.

Listening To Patients

Despite the admonishment, they played a variety of sports throughout their school years. Perry became a professional golfer and Corey became a professional baseball player. To prevent or treat bleeding episodes, they took infusions of plasma-derived clotting factor—and, since 2016, CSL’s longer-lasting recombinant product Afstyla®

When Paul invited Perry to share his remarkable story of perseverance at the CSL headquarters in Melbourne (Australia), the auditorium was packed. Perry talked about the many times his parents raced him to a hospital emergency room for infusions. How even when his elbow joint was rigid because of a painful bleed and an emergency room doctor warned him against being physically active, his parents supported his choice to continue. And how even today, he travels to golf tournaments around the world with his needles, syringe, and the infusion product that makes his active lifestyle possible.

After the talk, employees swarmed around to tell him how his words affected them. “It made them feel like their job is more important, it has more meaning,” Perry says. “They [typically] never meet anybody that actually uses the product, so it was very impactful for everybody that was there that day.”

Those personal stories have always mattered to Paul, who first met Perry at a charity golf tournament for the National Hemophilia Foundation. And that’s why he built patient story-telling into CSL’s activities internally and its messaging to the public.

CSL Plasma collection centers in the US have “Plasma P.A.L.S.” (Patients and Lifesavers), a program that connects patients and plasma donors. (The program was previously called “Adopt a Patient.”) “If you talk to a donor after they have met a patient, they’ll always say to you, even donation after donation, ‘I’m here to help someone else,’” says Michelle Meyer, Vice President of CSL Plasma Global Operations.

Every year, one event was set in advance on Paul’s calendar. Being a global CEO put so many demands on his time, but he wasn’t going to miss the annual Gettin’ in the Game Junior National Championship (JNC). He’s been to every one since it began in 2002.

GETTIN’ IN THE GAME

The JNC, sponsored by CSL and held in Arizona, is the only national sports competition in America specifically for children and teens with bleeding disorders such as hemophilia and von Willebrand Disease (another inherited clotting disorder). The athletes who volunteer to coach at JNC also have bleeding disorders; co-founders golf pro Perry Parker and his brother, Corey, who played professional baseball, have hemophilia A, a deficit of clotting factor VIII.

Children from around the country compete in golf, swimming, and baseball—but most importantly, they spend time with other kids who share their life experiences.

At the JNC, Paul participates as just another volunteer, wearing a red CSL Behring cap and caddying for kids. “He’s out helping these young people get through their round of golf,” says Bill Campbell, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at CSL Behring. “He’s raking the bunker for them. He’s helping read their putts. He’s doing this when his schedule is massively busy. He would never miss this weekend. And that’s just who he is.”

At the first JNC, Paul was helping Perry’s daughter with her stance but then didn’t move away. She took the swing—and bonked him in the back of the head. “We thought that might be the end of the JNC program,” Perry says with a laugh. “But luckily, he is a good sport and he just laughed it off. And the rest is history.”

In a LinkedIn post, Paul explained how he feels about the JNC: “It’s a privilege to participate in these programs that truly touch the lives of children living (and playing!) with hemophilia. It’s also a bit humbling . . . But most important, it’s a strong reminder of why we do what we do at CSL Behring.”

Children practice their drives, with instruction from athletes who also have bleeding disorders.

Jeffrey Modell did his best to live like a regular kid—splashing in the pool, playing squash, sailing with his parents, hamming it up for his friends and family. But along with those moments of joy he had setbacks, when his body was aflame with fever and he needed extended hospital care to overcome an infection.

His condition was called primary immunodeficiency. That is a catch-all term for rare, inherited disorders of the immune system.

‘DO SOMETHING’ FOR JEFFREY

When Jeffrey was born in 1970, treatment options were limited. Fractionation of blood plasma began in the 1940s, and doctors started using intramuscular injections of gamma globulin in the 1950s to treat people who weren’t making enough antibodies to fight disease. Jeffrey’s disorder was initially called hypogammaglobulinemia—low antibody levels—and he was part of an early trial of infusions of intravenous immune globulin (IVIG). The treatments gave Jeffrey periods in which he seemed robust and healthy, but infections always came back. Jeffrey would say, “Mom, Dad, please do something,” his mother Vicki recalls. “Little did he know, we were doing everything we could.”

After Jeffrey died at the age of fifteen of pneumocystis pneumonia, Vicki and Fred Modell started a foundation to spur research, diagnosis, and treatment of immune deficiencies—to help other kids like Jeffrey.

Touched and inspired by Jeffrey’s story, Paul became part of that mission. From his time as general manager of plasma operations at Aventis Behring and through his tenure as CEO at CSL, Paul sought to increase plasma capacity. CSL is now one of the world’s largest collectors of plasma. In 2010, CSL received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for an immunoglobulin called Hizentra that is injected under the skin, enabling it to be administered with an infusion device at home.

Paul also shaped CSL’s support of the Jeffrey Modell Foundation, helping establish new diagnostic and research centers around the world. For example, in 2017 CSL sponsored the Jeffrey Modell North African Network, the first entity to help primary immunodeficiency patients in Africa.

“In every city we went to with him for these dedications [of new facilities], there were patients and their families, and he made a point to speak to every single one of them,” says Vicki. “He cares so deeply about the patient.”

Vicki and Fred Modell launched a foundation to “do something” to help children like their son Jeffrey, who died at age fifteen from pneumonia related to his primary immunodeficiency.