A book about biotech pioneer Genentech from the company’s point of view skimps on science in favour of a glossy tale of daring and chutzpah
IN TODAY’S biotech industry, start-up companies sprout from every university biology department, looking to hook up with big pharma or agrochemical firms to take their patented, DNA-based ingenuity lucratively to market. But that option did not exist in 1973, when university researchers created the first artificial gene sequences of recombinant DNA. By 1980 it did, largely due to the struggles, luck and sheer chutzpah of these pioneering molecular biologists. They blazed a commercial and cultural trail, one followed not just by…
