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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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780226359205
Publisert
2018
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
University of Chicago Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter