Business is personal for this entrepreneur

SILVER SPRING, Md. – Martine Rothblatt founded Sirius Satellite Radio from a desire to link people together. She founded United Therapeutics from a desperation to save her daughter’s life.

With no background in medicine, pharmacology or biology, she was determined to find treatments for the disease that literally took the breath away from her young daughter Jenesis. Her success at biotech came on the heels of recognition as one of the inventors of satellite radio.

And she accomplished much of this during a time of personal transformation, undergoing a sex change in the early ‘90s.

These days, while still running United Therapeutics, Rothblatt devotes much of her spare time and energy to perhaps the ultimate challenge: defeating death itself. She has established a foundation dedicated to preparing humanity for the upheaval that will come when immortality becomes a reality.

She is unfazed when people scoff at the notion.

“All my life, people have been telling me, ‘It can’t be done,’ ” she said.

Rothblatt’s first business was satellites, something that interested her from an early age.

“My mind got stuck on the fact that reality is vastly larger than just the planet Earth,” Rothblatt, 53, said in an interview in the conference room at United Therapeutics, where posterboards outlining the company’s newest research are interspersed with photos of Jenesis.

Rothblatt only rarely grants interviews, which perhaps contributes to her accomplishments remaining relatively unknown compared to high-profile corporate chieftains.

Her M.B.A. thesis in 1980 at UCLA was essentially the blueprint for her first company, PanAmSat, which created a satellite-based vehicle tracking system.

Charlie Firestone, one of her professors, said Rothblatt “was the single most outstanding student in my 13 years teaching at UCLA law.”

Rothblatt stood out in part because she had a strong moral sensibility. “She was an innovative thinker, while not an outlandish one … just spinning science fiction,” he said.

As satellite technology grew more advanced, she was struck by the potential to create the radio equivalent to cable television, a sort of “cable on wheels.” Most of the technology was already in existence, Rothblatt said.

Still, engineers told her there were too many technological impediments; others said the business model was flawed.

Rothblatt was undaunted, in part because of her educational background. Her interdisciplinary communications program at UCLA gave her technical training in satellite engineering, along with media courses and legal training important to negotiate the Byzantine federal regulations that govern the airwaves.

“I had enough training to know how it could work. I didn’t have so much training that I was unwilling to do something different,” Rothblatt said.

Eventually Rothblatt convinced the Federal Communications Commission to devote a slice of the nation’s airwaves to satellite radio. But the FCC insisted a competing company – which became XM Satellite Radio – be given some of the bandwidth so that Rothblatt’s company would not enjoy a monopoly.

Interestingly, Sirius now plans to acquire XM. The FCC is considering the proposed acquisition, which the Justice Department has already approved.

Rothblatt said she is not bitter that that she was required to essentially give up half her invention.

“I’m just happy that satellite radio is bringing enjoyment to people. … Usually you have to be dead” before your inventions catch on with the public, she said.

Though corporate culture can at times be conservative, Rothblatt’s business partners have essentially been indifferent to the sex change operation she underwent in the early 1990s. She was known as Martin Rothblatt before the operation, including when she founded Sirius.

“Out of maybe a thousand investor presentations I’ve made over the years, it was only brought up by one investor,” Rothblatt said. She could not remember whether that individual eventually invested.

It was also around that time – 1992 – that Rothblatt’s and partner Bina Rothblatt’s daughter, Jenesis, first became ill. Her lips turned blue even after mild exertion. She couldn’t walk up two steps and Rothblatt was told Jenesis would need a lung or heart transplant.

Jenesis was eventually diagnosed with primary pulmonary hypertension, a rare life-threatening disease in which the body has difficulty pushing blood through the lungs.

Treatment options were few. Rothblatt learned few drug companies were willing to invest in treatments for rare conditions with limited market potential.

Rothblatt decided to bankroll research by starting a foundation. She requested proposals from the medical community, as for a business contract, and gave out millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, Jenesis got worse.

Then Rothblatt saw “Lorenzo’s Oil,” a film based on the story of parents who developed a treatment for their son’s rare brain disease.

“I had an epiphany,” Rothblatt said. “I changed mode from grant-giver to doer.”

By then, Rothblatt had already quit Sirius to devote herself full time to her daughter’s care. She established a drug company, LungRx, and learned that Glaxo Wellcome Inc. had shelved a potentially promising drug because of the limited profit potential.

After extensive effort – and the intervention of a Glaxo executive – Rothblatt bought the rights to the drug for $25,000. Robert Bell, the Glaxo executive who helped facilitate the sale, was familiar with pulmonary hypertension because his sister had also been diagnosed with the illness.

“She was very passionate about getting it developed,” said Bell, now a partner in venture capital firm Intersouth Partners in Durham, N.C. “The great thing about entrepreneurs is that they don’t see risk, where other observers are looking at all the obstacles. Entrepreneurs have a way of looking forward.”

Rothblatt’s company, Silver Spring, Md.-based United Therapeutics, obtained FDA approval for the drug, Remodulin, and is developing new, improved treatments. Now United Therapeutics has 275 employees and a market capitalization approaching $2 billion.

In November, shares of United Therapeutics jumped 46 percent, exceeding $100 a share, following announcement that clinical trials of an inhaled form of Remodulin exceeded expectations. On Wednesday, shares closed at $87.24. The company is also in late stage development of a drug for ovarian cancer.

Amazingly, Jenesis has been able to control her condition with other, less obtrusive medications. Now 23, she is healthy and has taken up competitive ballroom dancing.

Both Rothblatt and Bina, who have been married for 26 years, plan to be cryogenically preserved, hoping to be revived by future technology.

“We’re doing it because we love each other so much, we want to live together forever,” said Bina.

Rothblatt argues that advances in science are such that leaps in life expectancy will be made “in our lifetime, or sooner,” allowing people to live forever. She is focused on the ethical implications of immortality; she founded the Terasem Movement, which is dedicated to educating the public on the need to extend life.