Who is the founder of biotechnology

Less well known were private consultancies that advised the brewing industry. The heyday and expansion of zymotechnology came in World War I in response to industrial needs to support the war.

With food shortages spreading and resources fading, some dreamed of a new industrial solution. He built a slaughterhouse for a thousand pigs and also a fattening farm with space for 50, pigs, raising over , pigs a year.

The enterprise was enormous, becoming one of the largest and most profitable meat and fat operations in the world. In a book entitled Biotechnologie , Ereky further developed a theme that would be reiterated through the 20th century: biotechnology could provide solutions to societal crises, such as food and energy shortages.

In Chicago, for example, the coming of prohibition at the end of World War I encouraged biological industries to create opportunities for new fermentation products, in particular a market for nonalcoholic drinks.

In the s, penicillin was the most dramatic. While it was discovered in England, it was produced industrially in the U. The enormous profits and the public expectations penicillin engendered caused a radical shift in the standing of the pharmaceutical industry. In particular, cortisone promised the same revolutionary ability to change medicine as penicillin had. Even greater expectations of biotechnology were raised during the s by a process that grew single-cell protein.

When the so-called protein gap threatened world hunger, producing food locally by growing it from waste seemed to offer a solution. It was the possibilities of growing microorganisms on oil that captured the imagination of scientists, policy makers, and commerce. First, the price of oil rose catastrophically in , so that its cost per barrel was five times greater than it had been two years earlier. Second, despite continuing hunger around the world, anticipated demand also began to shift from humans to animals.

The program had begun with the vision of growing food for Third World people, yet the product was instead launched as an animal food for the developed world. The rapidly rising demand for animal feed made that market appear economically more attractive.

The ultimate downfall of the SCP project, however, came from public resistance. For all their enthusiasm for innovation and traditional interest in microbiologically produced foods, the Japanese were the first to ban the production of single-cell proteins. Thus, public resistance to an unnatural product led to the end of the SCP project as an attempt to solve world hunger. In the late s, biotechnology offered another possible solution to a societal crisis.

As a result, fermenting the agricultural surpluses to synthesize fuel seemed to be an economical solution to the shortage of oil threatened by the Iran-Iraq war. Before the new direction could be taken, however, the political wind changed again: the Reagan administration came to power in January and, with the declining oil prices of the s, ended support for the gasohol industry before it was born. Biotechnology seemed to be the solution for major social problems, including world hunger and energy crises.

In the s, radical measures would be needed to meet world starvation, and biotechnology seemed to provide an answer. However, the solutions proved to be too expensive and socially unacceptable, and solving world hunger through SCP food was dismissed.

In the s, the food crisis was succeeded by the energy crisis, and here too, biotechnology seemed to provide an answer. But once again, costs proved prohibitive as oil prices slumped in the s. Thus, in practice, the implications of biotechnology were not fully realized in these situations. But this would soon change with the rise of genetic engineering. The origins of biotechnology culminated with the birth of genetic engineering.

There were two key events that have come to be seen as scientific breakthroughs beginning the era that would unite genetics with biotechnology. Genetic engineering proved to be a topic that thrust biotechnology into the public scene, and the interaction between scientists, politicians, and the public defined the work that was accomplished in this area.

Technical developments during this time were revolutionary and at times frightening. In December , the first heart transplant by Christian Barnard reminded the public that the physical identity of a person was becoming increasingly problematic. Responses to scientific achievements were colored by cultural skepticism. Scientists and their expertise were looked upon with suspicion.

Woody Allen satirized the cloning of a person from a nose in his movie Sleeper , and cloning Adolf Hitler from surviving cells was the theme of the novel by Ira Levin, The Boys from Brazil. In response to these public concerns, scientists, industry, and governments increasingly linked the power of recombinant DNA to the immensely practical functions that biotechnology promised.

So small companies that are 3—5 years old are having trouble raising money at the exaggerated levels that they managed a few years ago. Gilbert says that promising new companies can still raise money — just in smaller amounts. The demand for pharmacogenomics and bioinformatics expertise continues to grow, he says, along with the companies featuring them — much more than the rest of the industry.

Burrill, who sees the industry as cyclical, expects both stock value and job opportunities to rebound within a year or two. Richard Scheller, vice-president of research at Genentech, says that the company is not feeling much of a pinch, as it has a good number of products on the market.

It recently hired ten new staff, and is building a new facility in South San Francisco. But even so, it is not hiring as many people as it did three years ago. Burrill asserts that much of the restructuring in the drug industry has been good for biotech.

Merging companies often shed staff, products and preclinical ideas that firms can pick up. And with pharmaceutical firms now bigger and more marketing-driven than ever, biotech companies remain important engines of innovation. New technologies, meanwhile, continue to infuse the industry. Nanotechnology and pharmacogenomics, for example, are both areas of potential job growth. Gilbert sees 'lifestyle drugs' such as Viagra as the wave of the future — companies such as Memory Pharmaceuticals in Montvale, New Jersey, are trying to develop drugs that enhance memory and attention.

Such prospects seem a far cry from the ideas raised at that Hawaiian deli more than a quarter of a century ago. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Reprints and Permissions. Russo, E. Special Report: The birth of biotechnology. Nature , — Download citation. Issue Date : 23 January Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:.

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Monash Bioethics Review However, to get the revolution going, the technology needed to reach the market. In January , one of the scientists behind the study, Herbert Boyer, received a phone call. Swanson was enthusiastic about the commercial potential of the recombinant bacteria and persuaded the reluctant Boyer to meet up for a few minutes.

The meeting ended up lasting for hours, with Swanson convincing Boyer to found a company. Boyer also came up with a name for the company: Genentech, derived from the words genetic engineering technology. Genentech was founded on April 7th, with no assets, equipment, or even a secretary. Despite these humble beginnings, the company was able to use recombinant E. Two years later, the company used this technique to produce the human hormone insulin , which was a huge breakthrough.

Previously, big pharma Eli Lilly had been harvesting animal versions of the hormone from cow and pig pancreases. After many years of getting drugs to the market, the company was eventually acquired by the Swiss giant Roche in Today, Genentech has over 15, employees. With several blockbuster drugs under its belt and a large development pipeline, the company routinely collaborates with other players in academia and industry.

However, the company set many precedents for the biotech industry across the globe. With their tiny initial investments, the co-founders of Genentech set the trend for funding biotech ventures from venture capitalists.