Top Five Wealthiest People in Los Angeles

Patrick Soon-Shiong

Net Worth: $5 billion

Profession: Medical surgeon and CEO of Abraxis BioScience, a company that creates treatments for cancer

How He Made His Wealth: He’s smart. He developed the first FDA-approved protein nanoparticle delivery technology for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer and this drug is being developed for lung, melanoma, gastric and pancreatic cancer. He is a co-inventor of more than 50 issued U.S. patents and has published more than 100 scientific papers. He is also the founder of two publicly traded pharmaceutical companies, American Pharma Partners and Abraxis Bioscience.

Fast Facts: He was born in South Africa, where his parents landed after fleeing their native China during World War II. He graduated from high school when he was 16 and got a medical degree by the time he was 23. He is the executive director of the UCLA Wireless Health Institute and is a professor of microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics of bioengineering at UCLA.