Biotechnology - Genomic and Proteomics/Give an overall picture of the BGP field
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Give an overall picture of the field.
How was this field born and how is it evolving?
Timeline
- 1953, Crick and Watson discover DNA at Stanford
- 1973, rDNA (insertion of foreign gene between two ends of an existing gene) produced at Stanford (Acharya pp. 2)
- 1970's and 1980's âÃì proliferation of private biotech firms
- 1971, Cetus founded
- 1976, Genentech founded. First firm to use rDNA technology (Acharya pp. 4)
- 1982, first rDNA product, human insulin, approved in US (Acharya pp. 4)
- 1980's firms grow through heavy outside investment
- easy financing for firms that chose to go public (Acharya pp. 2)
- 1980's, outside US, pressure to subsidize public-private partnerships for Biotech research (Acharya pp. 3)
- 1987, stock market crash and larger recession push small biotech firms to merge into larger multinational companies
- 1990, Genentech merges with Hoffman LaRouch to become largest example of this new sort of firm (Acharya pp. 3)
- 1993, only 14 biopharmaceutical companies record profits (Acharya pp. 5)
- 1995, Glaxo-Wellcome merge, forming one of world's largest pharma companies
Causes and Culture
- Biotech industry emerged from Bay area in 1960's
- Stanford's biochemistry and virology (later molecular biology) departments expanded aggressively during this time (Penhoet pp. 6)
- Bill Rutter, chairman of UCSF's Biochemistry and Biophysics department . His work ethic became the model for the industry (Penhoet pp. 7)
- Herb Boyer, Bob Swanson start Genentech in the mid-1970's
- first private biotech firm
- later followed by Cetus, Chiron (Penhoet pp. 8)
- Venture Capital firms already existed to support emerging Silicon Valley, came in to support Biotech ventures as well (Penhoet pp. 8)
- Open attitude towards IP: belief early on that innovation would be sustained, so academics continued to publish their findings, even when working with private companies (Penhoet pp. 8-9)
- Biotech industry emerged from Bay area in 1960's