The Business of Genomics
More than 50 years after the discovery of the double helix, its profit potential remains unrealized. —David Ewing Duncan
1953
James Watson and Francis Crick launch the genomic age with their discovery that DNA is arranged in long strands that are shaped in a double helix. They win the Nobel Prize in 1962.
1966
H. Gobind Khorana and Marshall Nirenberg lead teams that crack the genetic code, deciphering the mechanics of DNA. They share the Nobel Prize with Robert Holley in 1968.
1971
Cetus, the first biotech company, is founded. When Cetus goes public in March 1981, it grosses $120 million—at the time, the biggest industrial I.P.O. ever.
1972
Paul Berg (center) combines the DNA of two organisms to create what is known as recombinant DNA. The process he invents becomes the basis for the biotech industry. Berg wins the Nobel Prize in 1980.
1976
Biochemist Herb Boyer and venture capitalist Robert Swanson (pictured) found Genentech. Two years later, the company clones human insulin, which can now be manufactured using recombinant DNA.
1980
In Diamond v. Chakrabarty (Chakrabarty pictured), the U.S. Supreme Court rules that new forms of life made in labs can be patented, providing the intellectual-property framework for the biotech industry.
1980
Riding the promise of biotech to revolutionize the drug industry, Genentech goes public. In the first hour of trading, the price soars from $35 to $88 a share. Amgen goes public three years later.
1987
The Human Genome Project to map human DNA is launched by James Watson (pictured) and the U.S. Department of Energy. It is later taken over by Francis Collins and the National Institutes of Health.
1987
Biotech stocks and investment plummet, only to climb again in the early 1990s. Biotech proves to be a volatile industry, with marked boom-and-bust cycles.
1989
Amgen launches Epogen, a drug for anemia, which is also sold by Johnson & Johnson under the name Procrit. It becomes the most profitable biotech drug ever, with annual sales of $5.5 billion.
1998
Genentech gets F.D.A. approval for one of the first drugs to use personalized genetics. The drug, Herceptin, treats breast cancer, but it is effective only in patients who have a particular genetic makeup.
1999
As the Human Genome Project accelerates, investors and big pharmaceutical companies pump billions into a new wave of companies, including Craig Venter’s Celera.
2000
The race between public and private institutions to sequence the human genome is declared a tie by president Bill Clinton. The genomics bubble is fully inflated.
2001 to 2003
The tech bubble bursts. The Nasdaq biotechnology index loses half its value between January 2001 and January 2003.
2003
DNA Direct is founded. It has the first serious direct-to-consumer genetic-testing website.
2005
Google’s Sergey Brin outlines his vision to use the company’s search technology to organize the rapidly accumulating mass of data about genetics.
2006 to 2007
Biotech rebounds, with $17 billion in total financing—up 49 percent in 2006 from the year before—and a 14 percent increase in revenue, though the industry as a whole remains in the red.
2007
Illumina introduces a chip that tests 1 million genetic markers. Craig Venter and James Watson have their entire genomes sequenced, at a cost of about $1 million apiece.
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