Word: interferons
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...designed to produce pure antibodies for use against disease. But of all these marvels, it is gene splicing that scientists consider the most exciting. Says the University of Zurich's Charles Weissmann, 50, who last year became the first scientist to make bacteria produce a facsimile of human interferon: "Biology has become as unthinkable without gene-splicing techniques as sending an explorer into the jungle without a compass...
...University of California Biochemist Herbert Boyer, 44. The company now has a staff of 200. It has signed research agreements with several large pharmaceutical houses, including Hoffmann-La Roche and A.B. Kabi, and leads all gene-splicing firms by offering half a dozen products. Among them: several types of interferon, one of which is now undergoing clinical trials. Genentech is also collaborating with another leading drug company, Eli Lilly, on mass production of human insulin. Last week Genentech announced its latest gene-splicing advance. In collaboration with scientists from the University of Washington, Genentech...
Bitter legal disputes have already broken out. The University of California has sued Hoffmann-La Roche and Genentech on charges that a line of cells they use to produce a type of interferon was first created in the university's San Francisco labs (Genentech's Boyer was, and still is, a top researcher at U.C.S.F.). That case is still pending in the courts. But another squabble with the university has already cost Genentech $350,000, plus future royalty payments to the school. The money was awarded to the university for work done by one of its researchers on a hormone...
...with bacterially produced interferon, developed at Genentech. Interferon is part of a natural defense system against such viral diseases as influenza and hepatitis; it also seems to act against certain types of cancer, particularly cancer of the breast and the lymph nodes. But to date only extremely small quantities of it have been available, all painstakingly collected from blood cells and other human tissue. Relatively few patients, only several hundred out of the hundreds of thousands of cancer victims who might benefit from interferon, have been receiving the drug. Natural interferon is very costly (up to $150 for a daily...
...extremely well. Today, after less than five years, Genentech probably has the best research facilities in the gene-splicing business (40 Ph.D.s, 65 technicians). It has produced and is testing half a dozen recombinant DNA products, including insulin, human growth hormone and various types of human interferon. Swanson gives Boyer the highest grades: "For an academic, he's got an incredible sense of what's important from a business standpoint...