In the fall of 1980, Genentech, Inc., a little-known California
genetic engineering company, became the overnight darling of Wall
Street, raising over $38 million in its initial public stock
offering. Lacking marketed products or substantial profit, the firm
nonetheless saw its share price escalate from $35 to $89 in the
first few minutes of trading, at that point the largest gain in
stock market history. Coming at a time of economic recession and
declining technological competitiveness in the United States, the
event provoked banner headlines and ignited a period of speculative
frenzy over biotechnology as a revolutionary means for creating new
and better kinds of pharmaceuticals, untold profit, and a possible
solution to national economic malaise. Drawing from an unparalleled
collection of interviews with early biotech players, Sally Smith
Hughes offers the first book-length history of this pioneering
company, depicting Genentech's improbable creation, precarious
youth, and ascent to immense prosperity. Hughes provides intimate
portraits of the people significant to Genentech's science and
business, including cofounders Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson,
and in doing so sheds new light on how personality affects the
growth of science. By placing Genentech's founders, followers,
opponents, victims, and beneficiaries in context, Hughes also
demonstrates how science interacts with commercial and legal
interests and university research, and with government regulation,
venture capital, and commercial profits. Integrating the
scientific, the corporate, the contextual, and the personal,
"Genentech" tells the story of biotechnology as it is not often
told, as a risky and improbable entrepreneurial venture that had to
overcome a number of powerful forces working against it.
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