Avid Radiopharmaceutical founder Skovronsky combines science with entrepreneurship

At 37, Daniel Skovronsky seems impossibly young for his accomplishments.

There is the molecular biochemistry degree from Yale, the medical degree and doctorate in neuropathology from Penn, the groundbreaking work in Alzheimer's research, and now Avid Radiopharmaceutical Inc., the University City company he founded, nurtured, and grew until its sale Nov. 8 to Eli Lilly & Co. for up to $800 million.

Along the way, he has garnered myriad awards for his success in business, a discipline in which he has no formal training.

"I didn't have much of an idea of what I was getting into, which was very helpful," Skovronsky said in an interview last week when asked about the leap from scientist to entrepreneur. "It would have been much harder if I had any sense of the challenges ahead."

There he is, self-effacing, drily witty, and not a hint of the depths of his skills.

"He is a very brilliant guy," said Hank Kung, a mentor and professor of radiopharmaceutical science at the University of Pennsylvania. "The cream of the crop."

Skovronsky is one of those rare individuals, blessed with surfeits of talent and drive, who manage in short order to excel in multiple arenas. In this instance, medical science and business.

He has combined both in his work developing a diagnostic tool for Alzheimer's disease.

The end product - a dye that identifies evidence of the disease in the brain - will prove to be the "medical innovation of 2011," according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Ernst & Young L.L.P. has given its imprimatur to Skovronsky the chief executive officer, naming him the entrepreneur of the year in 2009 for Avid Radiopharmaceutical, which he launched in 2005.

Married to an ophthalmologist and the father of two young girls, Skovronsky grew up in Fairfax, Va.

The son of a pathologist, he followed his love of medicine and science, first to Yale, then to Penn.

While training as a neuropathologist, Skovronsky devoted his study to Alzheimer's disease. Specifically, he was driven to find a foolproof way to diagnose the disease in living patients.

At the moment, the only sure diagnostic method is to perform an autopsy to determine if there had been a buildup of amyloid plaque in the patient's brain. The presence of the plaque is the hallmark of the disease.