Genentech cofounder Herb Boyer told his origin story at this week’s CED Life Sciences conference in Raleigh. He waxed nostalgic about carefree, football-playing days in Western Pennsylvania – as well as his role in the genesis of the multibillion dollar biotech industry.
“There’s been an explosion of knowledge in my lifetime,” the 78-year-old Boyer said.
But back when Watson and Crick were unraveling the structure of DNA, all Boyer was interested in was “hunting, fishing and girls.” That soon changed in college when he started down the biochem path – generating some original work in recombinant genetics.
“It’s nice to make an original observation. You own it. It’s yours,” Boyer said. “You have something no one else in the world knows – for a short while.”
He spoke of the launch of Genentech in 1976, and how with $500 dollar check from he and his wife, he gained a third of the future behemoth. Cofounder Robert Swanson also invested $500 in those early days. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, by contrast, put up $250,000 for an equal stake.
Back in those early days, Boyer said he never expected human genetics to be so intricate – but today, we’ve got reams of data that prove otherwise. This rapid expansion of knowledge started in the early 1980s, he said, expanding through the 90s – it “kept building and building and building,” he said.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“The complexity of life far exceeds what we anticipated 50 years ago when I was a student,” Boyer said.
It’s impossible these days to keep up with the volume of research being perpetually churned out, Boyer said. In the current fast-paced era of next-gen sequencing, there’s still loads of potential for advancement in biotechnology, Boyer said.
“I think the biomedical sciences will continue to be a lot of fun,” Boyer said. “I hope you have a lot of fun. All you folks are responsible to make sure we continue on to find ways to make our lives a little better.”
