Education and Early Career
Waksal earned a bachelor's degree in 1969 and a doctorate in immunobiology in 1974, both from The Ohio State University.
Over the next 15 years, he worked as a medical researcher at Stanford University, the National Cancer Institute, Tufts University and Mount Sinai Hospital, New York. However, his academic career was plagued by numerous ethical problems, including misrepresenting the source of material and fabricating lab results.
Undaunted, Waksal founded ImClone in 1984. The company slogged along until 2001, when it won the rights to develop Erbitux, a cancer antibody. The drug's clinical success caused ImClone's stock to jump as high as $70 a share. Bristol-Myers Squibb was intrigued enough by Erbitux to buy a large stake in the company in return for the rights to the drug. Those plans hit a snag, however, when the Food and Drug Administration turned down ImClone's application due to concerns about the structure of the clinical trials.
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