 | Box 1
Nature Biotechnology
17, 91 (1999)
doi:10.1038/5279
People | | | 
| Answers to quiz on page 90
1. In a thin year for biotechnology IPOs, North American companies just
shaded the lion's share of the pot. 13 US companies and 1 Canadian raised
$333.4 million: 7 European companies raised $286.4 million. The top three
in 1998 were Pharming (Leiden, The Netherlands) with $70.8 million; Nanogen
(San Diego, CA) with $63.9 million; and Transgene (Strasbourg, France) with
$57.2 million. European companies took 6 of the top 10 places.
2. (a) Phylos (Lexington, MA); (b) Monsanto (St. Louis, MO); (c) Diversa (San
Diego, CA); (d) Hybridon (Milford, MA); (e) Metabolex (Hayward, CA)
3. American Home Products and Smithkline Beecham. AHP and SB first tried merging
with each other but in January, SB got what it thought was a better offer
from Glaxo Wellcome. The Glaxo Wellcome-SB merger failed because of wrangling
between the companies' managements over succession top jobs. Then, over the
summer, AHP thought it had hooked Monsanto. That fell through when it became
clear that Monsanto was only after AHP's money to support its spending spree
in the seed markets.
4. Germany (Nature Biotechnology 16:511,
June 1998); Apik is marketing an antimugging device that as well as producing
the usual ear-piercing alarm also punctures the skin of the assailant, collecting
a sample for DNA analysis (Nature Biotechnology 16:605, July 1998).
5. Choose any 3 from the following 10 companies: Bio Logicals; Bio-Response;
Biotech Research Labs; Biotechnica International; Cetus; Damon Biotech; Genetic
Engineering; Genex; Monoclonal Antibodies; or Summa Medical (Nature Biotechnology
16:241, March 1998).
6. Korea (Nature Biotechnology 16:151,
February 1998).
7. (a) ProScript (Cambridge, MA); (b) CeNes
(Cambridge, UK); (c) Oxford GlycoScience (Abingdon, UK); (d) AngioGene (Montreal,
Canada); (e) DeveloGen (Gottingen, Germany).
8. Urine. Bob
Wall and colleagues at the US Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, MD,
produced human growth hormone by creating mice that expressed trangenes in
their bladder epithelium (January p. 75)
9. (a) De; (b) Max;
(c) Medi; (d) Ribo; (e) Cen; (f) Trans; (g) Phy
10. S. cerevisiae
(May 1995); H. pylori (Sep. 1997); M. genitalium (Oct. 1997); B. subtilis
(Nov. 1997); M. jannaschii (Jan. 1998); M. tuberculosis (June 1998); T. pallidum
(July 1998); R. prowazekii (Nov. 1998); C. elegans (Dec. 1998)
11. Biolistics, the technique for propelling DNA on particles into tissue,
which was invented by John Sanford at Cornell University. He used it successfully
to transform onions, among other plants. The license to use the technique
to deliver DNA to humans now rests with a small Oxford company called PowderJect
Pharmaceuticals who signed a deal with Glaxo Wellcome in March 1998 concerning
the development of a delivery system for DNA vaccines (Nature Biotechnology
16:309, April 1998).
12. Recombinant human insulin. Hoechst
applied for permission to produce the hormone in 1984. On March 16, 1998,
the (then) German Research Minister, Jürgen Rüttgers, opened the
insulin plant (Nature Biotechnology 16:409, May 1998)
13.
(a) Ceres (Los Angeles, CA), a startup focusing on agricultural genetics,
which formed an alliance with Genset (Paris) in January; (b) Iterex Technologies
(Boulder, CO), which split from NeXstar Pharmaceuticals in October; (c) Max
Plank Institute's agbiotechnology startup, Metanomics (Golm, Germany), shares
it name with Rosenstock-Huessy's theological approach, which forms "the frame
for the joyous exultations of life;" (d) Celera Genomics, formed by Perkin
Elmer and The Institute for Genomic Research in May, to "swiftly provide pharmaceutical
companies and researchers the information contained in the complete human
genome."
14. (a) News of a benchmark paper in Science (279:349−352,
1998), reporting extension of the lifespan of normal human cells using cloned
telomerase; (b) Adrian Bebb, a spokesperson for Friends of the Earth, responding
to a Nature report describing a transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana
that suprisingly was 20-fold more likely than a corresponding mutant to outcross
with a wild-type Arabidopsis, going against years of research; (c)
A highly controversial bill to create a nationwide computerized database of
health records in Iceland, the most likely licensee of which is deCODE Genetics
(Reykjavik, Iceland) in the words of Bryndis Hlodversdottir, a member of Iceland's
parliament, and Kari Stefansson, deCODE's CEO, respectively.
|
|
|
