Word: genentech
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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 was looking...
...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 17 in 1982, and Cetus dropped below 8 that year, from a 1981 high...
...Myers. He also pared back Cetus' rambling research to focus on projects with the most commercial potential. The company is now testing its version of interferon, a promising anticancer agent, and hopes to have the product on the market in two years. But at least five other firms, including Genentech and Geneva-based Biogen, are also in the interferon race...
Early this year G. Kirk Raab, the second in command at Abbott Laboratories, a large drug company, left to become president of Genentech. To prepare for the introduction of Protropin, Raab helped build a national marketing organization, which includes 15 hospital-based sales representatives with an average of 15 years' experience. Now Raab is working on plans to sell interferon and TPA (tissue plasminogen activator), a drug that dissolves blood clots and thus may help prevent heart attacks...
...biotech companies' new emphasis on marketing has revived Wall Street's enthusiasm for their stocks. Genentech has risen from 34 to 49 since January, while Cetus has gone from less than 9 to nearly 16. Says Peter Drake, a biotechnology expert at the Kidder Peabody investment firm: "From an investor's standpoint, the industry is at a breakout point...