Arthur Pancoe’s $10 million donation to fund Northwestern’s life sciences center was received with appreciation — and surprise.
“I called University President Henry Bienen up, and I said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, why?’ and I said, ‘I’d like to endow the new life science pavilion,” Pancoe, 77, says of his conversation with Bienen in 2000. “I’m gonna give you $10 million.’ And he couldn’t believe me. And I said, ‘It’s real.'”
A half hour later, Bienen called back.
“Henry says, ‘You must be kidding.’ And I said ‘No, it’s real,” Pancoe says.
But the donation is just a piece of Pancoe’s 60-year connection to NU.
Another recent Pancoe donation to NU came in 1997, when he and his wife, Gladys, established the Arthur and Gladys Pancoe Chair in Mathematics. Pancoe met Bienen that year, and the two are now close friends. They can be seen, along with Board of Trustees chairman Patrick Ryan, cheering for the football team at away games.
“Mr. Pancoe is one of our most thoughtful and helpful donors and friends,” Bienen writes in an e-mail. “He is an upbeat man who always tries for constructive solutions to problems.”
Pancoe’s constructive solutions could be chalked up to his years of experience as an investment banker. As a drug stock investment analyst, it’s Pancoe’s job to spot drugs with potential for success and advise his clients to invest accordingly.
These skills came in handy with Pancoe’s current passion: NU’s potential wonder drug, pregabalin.
“I may be exaggerating, but it may be as strong as narcotics,” he says as he shuffles through a stack of papers and news clippings, pulling out data on the drug.
Pregabalin, discovered by biochemistry Prof. Richard Silverman, could begin earning NU hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue as early as next year — making both the university and Pancoe’s clients very happy.
The drug has been hailed as the successor to the current treatment for central nervous system pain, Neurontin. In 2002, investment firm JPMorgan projected pregabalin’s sales could, if approved by the FDA, reach $3.4 billion in 2006.
“Central nervous pain can actually ruin your life,” says Pancoe. “That’s where you’ve got nerve pain, back pain. Present treatment is not at all satisfactory.”
But NU won’t need to wait for that time to see the effects of Pancoe’s expertise and success. The Arthur and Gladys Pancoe-Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Life Sciences Pavilion is slated to be completed this spring, adding research laboratories, faculty offices and an Einstein Bros. Bagels shop to North Campus.
The Pavilion will be dedicated to the memory of the Pancoes’ granddaughter, Beth Elise Pancoe, who was an NU undergraduate in 1999 when she was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia. Beth had developed a “very virulent, aggressive type of tumor” as a child, Pancoe says. The chemotherapy used to treat that tumor caused another, which developed into the cancer.
“It was a death sentence,” Pancoe says of the diagnosis. Beth, who was 19, died three months after the diagnosis. “It seemed at times that she had that one in one hundred chance of making it, but she had so many different kinds of infections in her body.”
Pancoe hopes that Beth’s memory will be preserved with the unveiling of the pavilion in the spring. A socialite, sports fan and world-class skiier — ranked at ages six and nine on the NASTAR charts for downhill skiing — “she could do it all,” he says.
Pancoe, like Beth, began his undergraduate career at NU. At age 17 he elected to skip his senior year at New Trier High School and attend classes at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
“I’ve always been in a hurry,” he says.
Pancoe served a brief stint on a supply ship in the Western Pacific during World War II for the U.S. Naval Reserve. After returning from the war, he earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Wisconsin in 1946.
Pancoe returned to NU to earn his master’s degree in mathematics in 1951. He became a fellow and mathematics instructor at NU while working for his family’s business by day.
Pancoe entered the investment banking business in 1982, bringing along his old habit of reading clinical trials. Since then, the discovery of new, possibly lucrative drugs — and using such discoveries for early investment — has become a thriving business.
“It’s become much more competitive,” Pancoe says.
And Pancoe is good at it. A 1988 issue of Money Magazine features a profile of Pancoe with the headline, “Take Two of Arthur Pancoe’s Drug Stocks and You May Be Rich in the Morning.” The magazine followed up in 1991 with “How To Quadruple Your Money In Drug Stocks — Again,” an article that cites Pancoe’s successful investments in the biotech stocks Amgen, Centocor and U.S. Bioscience.
Five-foot-six and stocky, Pancoe could pass for a man in his late 50s. The shelf behind his desk is a veritable museum of faces: Pancoe with his family; with Bienen; with mathematician and “A Beautiful Mind” subject John Forbes Nash, Jr.; and with Nobel laureate Paul Greengard, to name a few. Also on the wall are paintings by his wife, who goes by Hap — an artist who’s had paintings on display in the Chicago Art Institute — and framed clippings of headlines and articles featuring his successes.
Pancoe radiates energy and a certain kind of mathematical pizzazz. The green of his suit makes his green eyes gleam behind thick-lensed glasses. He’s alternately methodical and excited, chewing a well-manicured finger as he speaks in calm, measured sentences.
His varied life has included a lawsuit that made national headlines in 1969 — Pancoe, cofiling with Professor Jonathon Galloway of Lake Forest College, filed the suit to prevent the building of the Sentinel antiballistic missile system. After extensive media coverage and public debate, President Nixon canceled the development of the system in 1970. Pancoe also was active in the nuclear reactor controversy in the 1970s.
Pancoe continues to be closely involved with NU. He’s a trustee of the John Evans Society, an NU donor society. He’s been a regular at every NU football game since 1947. His Northwestern diploma is framed and hangs prominently on the wall of his office on the twenty-sixth floor of Bear, Stearns & Co. in downtown Chicago, where he has worked since 1982.
Pancoe’s history with NU will be highlighted this spring when he receives the 2003 Alumni Award, the highest honor given by the Alumni Association to NU graduates.
“I think they are both quite excited,” says Carolyn Sparks, Associate Director of Alumni Relations for NU, about Pancoe and his wife. “This is the biggest thing that we do.”
Arthur and Gladys “have their feet on the ground,” she says. “They are smart, creative, caring individuals.”
In the meantime, Pancoe will continue to watch the progress of pregabalin, as Pfizer files for FDA approval of the drug in March — hoping the drug will skyrocket into success for Pancoe and NU.
“It would certainly put us on the map,” he says. nyou
