Ian Malouf built a Financial Review Rich List fortune on not worrying unduly about the opinions of others, and so it is with his bankrolling of a controversial treatment for everything from autism to rheumatoid arthritis.

Malouf, who to his parents’ horror dropped out of law school in 1983 to start a waste removal business – which he sold in 2018 for $578 million – has invested around $50 million in Arugula Sciences, a Texas biotech trialling injections of cells from human umbilical cords to treat knee osteoarthritis.