Word: biotechs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...treat dwarfism in children. Genentech had previously developed Humulin, a synthetic insulin, but licensed it to an established pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly, which put the drug on the market. Protropin, which is expected to generate annual sales of $40 million, is the first human drug that a new biotech company has tried to sell on its own. Says Robert Swanson, Genentech's cofounder: "This is the beginning of the coming of age of the biotechnology industry...
...investors who have sunk $1.5 billion into biotech start-ups, the journey from the laboratory to the marketplace has seemed agonizingly long. The industry was born in the 1970s, when scientists developed techniques for manipulating genes and converting bacterial and animal cells into tiny factories that could mass-produce drugs and other useful chemicals. When the first of the gene-splicing firms, led by Genentech and Cetus of Emeryville, Calif., went public in the early 1980s, Wall Street went wild. Genentech's stock jumped from $35 to $71 the first day. Biotech seemed like the next computer industry, and everyone...
Wall Street, though, soon saw the high hurdles that lay ahead for biotech companies. After a new drug is developed, it must go through five to six years of painstaking tests in animals and human patients before it can win the approval of the Food and Drug Administration. In addition, a new firm faces the formidable tasks of equipping factories to mass-produce new drugs and building a national sales force to distribute them. Uncertain that the new biotech companies were up to the job, investors grew wary. Genentech's stock slipped to a low of about...
...last year's presidential election. It turned into a state-by-state free-for-all. While antiabortion lawmakers in some states are trying to ban the research--which uses cells, above, from discarded embryos or donated, unfertilized eggs--others see a potential gold mine and are trying to attract biotech firms. It's another red-state/blue-state divide, with some twists. --By Mitch Frank...
...Seeing Red A Danish biotech company has developed a new way to detect land mines using genetically modified THALE CRESS, a member of the mustard family. The plant turns a deep red when exposed to nitrogen dioxide, a gas released by mines. The grow-anywhere green, which scientists propose to sow from airplanes or handheld seed-shooters in heavily mined areas, could prove an inexpensive and safe solution for land mine detection?a boon to countries like Cambodia, which harbors an estimated four million mines...