Mogul Using $100 Million in Race to Cure Daughter Lures Novartis

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner Dinakar Singh discovered in 2001 that his 19-month-old daughter, Arya, had a crippling genetic disease called spinal muscular atrophy.

The malady makes the nerve cells that control muscles gradually deteriorate. There are no treatments, let alone a cure, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue. Worse still, while the gene causing the ailment had recently been discovered, nobody in the drug industry was doing much about it, he says.