After decades of building and revitalizing numerous multimillion-dollar restaurant chains, entrepreneur Ron Shaich is embracing one more challenge: leaving a positive impact on the world.
“I’ve had the good fortune to have some success in life,” he says. “I want to make sure I do a good job stewarding the blessings I’ve had and use them in a way that will make a real difference.”
Driven by that vision, Shaich made a three-year $3 million pledge last summer to fund Alzheimer’s disease research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Shaich’s gift will advance work led by David M. Holtzman, MD, the Barbara Burton and Reuben M. Morriss III Distinguished Professor of Neurology. The funding supports the university’s efforts to foster healthier lives through With You: The WashU Campaign, an engagement and fundraising initiative that launched May 1.
Living with intention
Credited with helping to create the fast-casual restaurant category, Miami-based Shaich is currently the managing partner and CEO of Act III Holdings, an investment vehicle focused on consumer-facing restaurant and entertainment companies. He is the lead investor and chairman of the board of Cava, Tatte, Life Alive, and Level 99. Shaich is also a lead investor and board member of Honest Greens, a healthy restaurant concept based in Europe. But he may be most notable — particularly to St. Louisans — as the founder and former CEO of Panera Bread, known locally as the St. Louis Bread Company. A two-time Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Shaich served as Panera Bread’s CEO from 1999 to 2010 and again from 2013 to 2018. He led the company’s sale to JAB Holdings in 2017.
“This work excites me because it’s obvious that it is extraordinary in its implications. Dave Holtzman and his collaborators have a real shot at making major breakthroughs in developing drugs to treat or even prevent Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, and to address them earlier than we do now.”
Ron Shaich
Shaich attributes his success to the “future-back method,” a philosophy he developed that centers on living with intention and planning ahead. “I look toward tomorrow, define what I truly value, and then work backward from there to ensure that those things are happening,” he writes in his 2023 book, Know What Matters: Lessons from a Lifetime of Transformations.
The method applies broadly to both professional and personal pursuits, he says. “For my personal life, it’s about being sure I’m living a life I can look back on with respect.”
A strategic choice
Shaich pursues that peace of mind, in part, through his philanthropy. He strategically seeks to invest in areas with significant potential for near-term impact. He targeted Alzheimer’s research because he recognizes the disease as one of the biggest health challenges facing humankind.
WashU was a natural fit for his investment. After living in St. Louis for many years, Shaich knew of the university’s reputation for biomedical research excellence. He became even more familiar with WashU when his son, Michael Shaich, BSBA ’22, entered as a first-year student in fall 2018.
“I already had a relationship with WashU and a respect for the institution — both its work and its values,” Shaich says. After a visit with Holtzman at WashU Medicine, he was sold on the physician-scientist’s accomplishments and the chance to be part of research that lies captivatingly close to clinical breakthroughs.
On the brink
Holtzman is a pioneer and international leader in Alzheimer’s disease research. He and his colleagues at WashU Medicine have illustrated the importance of amyloid beta, APOE, and tau proteins to the disease’s development and progression. Their findings continue to lay the groundwork for potential immunotherapies and other therapeutic strategies.
Healthier Lives
You can help WashU translate pathbreaking research into solutions that improve health around the world by supporting With You.
In 2007, Holtzman cofounded molecular diagnostics company C2N Diagnostics with Randall Bateman, MD, the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Distinguished Professor of Neurology. The company began offering the first accurate Alzheimer’s disease blood test in 2020.
Shaich’s gift will fund a relatively new segment of Holtzman’s work, which stems from a groundbreaking 2023 study published in the journal Nature. In that study, Holtzman, Xiaoying Chen, PhD, an instructor in neurology, and colleagues demonstrated for the first time that T cells from the immune system play a key role in neurodegeneration related to tau protein accumulation. Studying mice with Alzheimer’s-like brain impairment, they also showed that most of the damage could be avoided by blocking T cell activity or entry into the brain. Their findings suggest that targeting T cells and their interaction with other immune cells in the brain, known as microglia, could be an alternative route for preventing neurodegeneration and for treating Alzheimer’s and other tau-related diseases, collectively known as tauopathies.
“Before this study, we knew that T cells were increased in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease and other tauopathies, but we didn’t know for sure that they were, in some way, causing neurodegeneration,” Holtzman says. “These findings change the way we think about treating or slowing down Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders and opens up promising new therapeutic approaches.”
The results are particularly exciting, Holtzman explains, because drugs and other therapeutic agents that act on T cells are already in clinical use to treat autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. These therapies could prove valuable for humans if they are shown to protect against neurodegeneration in animal models where the tau protein is causing damage. With support from Shaich’s gift, Holtzman has begun animal drug testing, with the goal of identifying candidate agents to evaluate in humans soon.
“This work excites me because it’s obvious that it is extraordinary in its implications,” Shaich says. “Dave Holtzman and his collaborators have a real shot at making major breakthroughs in developing drugs to treat or even prevent Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, and to address them earlier than we do now.”
Filling a crucial funding gap
“Private gifts like Ron’s are hugely important to keeping medical research moving forward,” Holtzman says. When seeking funding, scientists rely heavily on the National Institutes of Health (NIH). But the agency focuses on research that explores the underlying mechanisms of disease, leaving later-stage studies such as Holtzman’s drug testing sometimes harder to obtain support. And no matter the study, NIH grant proposals can take a year or more to move through the funding process, thereby slowing research momentum.
“Private support not only makes this testing possible but also allows us to pursue promising findings immediately,” Holtzman says. He emphasizes that private philanthropy is particularly crucial right now, given the uncertainty surrounding federal research funding. “Having someone like Ron as a part of our team is really energizing and motivating. It makes me even more determined to reach our goal.”
Since the therapeutic agents being tested are already approved for medical use in humans, those that show promise for treating neurodegenerative diseases could have a relatively straightforward path to FDA approval for this new use.
“I hope we will be able to see approved medications that treat a range of neurodegenerative diseases,” Shaich says. “If I could be a part of achieving that in some small way, that would mean a lot to me.”
Shaich, who previously supported the Class of 2022 undergraduate scholarship, has gained a greater appreciation for the impact of his WashU Medicine funding. “Three million dollars is a lot of money, but it might seem small compared to the cost of doing medical research,” he says. “But I’ve come to understand that a gift of this level is not only necessary and appreciated but also enables really powerful things. I feel good about that.”
