This text initially appeared on Enterprise Insider.
Chip Wilson, the founding father of Lululemon, has been dwelling with a uncommon muscle illness for many years, and is investing $100 million of his multi-billion greenback internet price to find a treatment.
Wilson was recognized with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, or FSHD, in 1987 when he was 32, Bloomberg reported. The illness causes progressive losing of skeletal muscle and impacts just below 900,000 folks worldwide, based on the FSHD Society. Wilson has a good rarer kind known as FSHD2, which impacts solely 5% of individuals with the illness, Bloomberg famous. In different phrases, he’s one in every of about 43,000 folks with FSHD2.
For years after his prognosis, Bloomberg reported, Wilson led a reasonably lively way of life. Nonetheless, he instructed the publication that he had a “wake-up name” a long time later when he signed a take care of China’s largest athletic attire maker, Anta Sports activities Merchandise, to purchase a stake in Finnish sports activities firm Amer Sports activities and located himself struggling to stroll.
By 2022, he has launched a philanthropic fund known as Resolve FSHD, which goals to develop a treatment for the illness by 2027, based on his web site. Resolve is especially targeted on discovering new therapies for FSHD2 and has thus far invested near $31 million in biotech firms engaged on varied interventions, based on its web site.
Wilson appears to consider that ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs may be highly effective catalysts for medical innovation as a result of they’ve the means to draw expertise and a extra research-driven mindset than charities or authorities organizations. He instructed Bloomberg that capitalism “created every thing good on the earth.”
Bloomberg reported that within the meantime, Wilson additionally resorted to experimental procedures and examined a number of longevity and wellness therapies. He underwent electroacupuncture; occurring an IV drip of NAD, which is an enzyme that performs a key function in wholesome cell perform; taking weekly doses of the immunosuppressive drug rapamycin; and taking day by day doses of testosterone, the outlet reported.
Resolve FSHD didn’t instantly reply to Insider’s request for remark.