Botox® Developer Regrets Missed Opportunity to Mint Money

Botox® is one of the most recognizable drugs in the world, but its inventor, Dr. Alan Scott, has openly shared that he regrets selling the rights long before it became a household name. In a 2012 Times of India interview, Dr. Scott explained that if he had known how big Botox® would become, he would have never sold the rights to Allergan back in 1991. At the time, the $4.5 million deal felt fair—“satisfactory,” as he put it—but as the drug’s global growth skyrocketed, he later reflected that he could have been “making a billion dollars a year now.”

Before Botox® became synonymous with wrinkle reduction, it had a very different purpose. In 1989, it was originally approved to treat two eye muscle disorders: uncontrollable blinking and misaligned eyes. The formulation worked by relaxing overactive muscles, which opened the door for a wide range of future applications. Today, that same mechanism makes Botox® effective for both cosmetic treatments, like smoothing facial lines, and therapeutic uses, including muscle spasms and swallowing issues.

When Dr. Scott first developed the product, then named Oculinum, he didn’t anticipate its potential as an aesthetic treatment. That turning point emerged in 1992 when Canadian ophthalmologist Jean Carruthers noticed her patients’ frown lines fading as a side effect. Roughly a decade later, the FDA officially approved Botox® for improving frown lines, marking a major milestone that shifted the landscape of cosmetic medicine.