Patrick Soon-Shiong during a Urban Economic Forum co-hosted by White House Business Council and U.S. Small Business Administration at Loyola Marymount University on March 22, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

In the early months of the pandemic, as medical researchers and companies raced to develop a safe and effective vaccine, the Infectious Disease Research Institute was fighting to keep its doors open. The Seattle-based organization had taken on too much debt and was forced into court-administered receivership in January 2020, after sustaining losses of $7 million the previous year and debts of over $20 million.

Then, billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong swooped in to the rescue. Through his family foundation, the Los Angeles-based drug inventor and entrepreneur agreed to give the institute $26 million over three years starting in 2022 and joined the nonprofit’s board as its new chair. ImmunityBio, a clinical-stage biotech company controlled by Soon-Shiong, also agreed to pay the institute (which was renamed the Access for Advanced Health Institute, or AAHI) $2 million per year to support its research efforts and $5.5 million per year to license the nonprofit’s vaccine technology, which Soon-Shiong touted as “next-generation” when the partnership was made public in April 2022. “We are grateful and excited,” AAHI CEO Corey Casper, a medical doctor with infectious disease training, said at the time.

The relationship has since soured. Earlier this year, Soon-Shiong’s foundation declined to pay its third and final $8 million payment to AAHI; ImmunityBio has also not paid the $7.5 million it owes as part of its annual commitment. And now, some of AAHI’s leaders, led by Casper, are claiming that Soon-Shiong is holding up the money because they refused his demands to redirect his grant money to a separate philanthropic initiative — to support clinical training of physicians in South Africa — rather than AAHI’s core areas of focus of biotech research in support of cost-effective vaccines and immunotherapies for underserved populations.

“Dr. Soon-Shiong is seeking to exert control over the board to thwart AAHI’s efforts to recoup the many millions of dollars it's owed under its contracts with Dr. Soon-Shiong’s affiliated entities,” alleges a........

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