Dr. Phillip Frost is the chairman and CEO at OPKO Health, Inc., a biopharmaceutical and diagnostics company.
Dr. Frost was born in Philadelphia in 1936. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania, and his M.D. at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Following university, he served as a lieutenant commander for the U.S. Public Health Service at the National Cancer Institute. He then worked as a dermatology professor at the University of Miami School of Medicine, and later served as chair of Mt. Sinai Medical Center’s dermatology department.
Frost joined Key Pharmaceuticals in 1972, where he reformulated its asthma drug and then sold the company for $836 million in 1986. He served as chair and CEO for generic drugmaker, Ivax, from 1987 to 2006, when it was acquired by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. He sat on Teva’s board until 2015.
Presently, Dr. Frost serves as OPKO Health’s CEO, a role he has held since 2007. The company is involved in the discovery, development, and commercialization of pharmaceutical products, vaccines, and diagnostic products.
Dr. Frost is also a director of Cocrystal Pharma, Inc., a publicly traded biotechnology company developing new treatments for viral diseases.
In September 2018, the SEC accused Dr. Frost of participating in a "pump-and-dump" scheme that generated over $27 million in unlawful stock sales. He settled in December 2018 without admitting or denying the allegations.
Dr. Frost sits on numerous boards and has a long history of philanthropy. His financial gifts include a $33 million donation to the University of Miami School of Music in 2003, then the largest gift to a university music school in the U.S. The school was subsequently renamed the Phillip and Patricia Frost School of Music. In 2011, he gave $35 million for the construction of a new building for the Miami Science Museum, to be named the Patricia & Phillip Frost Science Museum, and in 2015, he gave an additional $10 million toward the museum’s Frost Planetarium.
He is married to Patrica Orr, and they live on Star Island, Miami Beach.