The Golden Helix: Inside Biotech Ventures

The average person - indeed, even the relatively sophisticated reader - is at once dazzled and mystified by the facts of biotechnology, both as a business and as an intellectual enterprise. Now Arthur Kornberg, drawing extensively on his own experiences in biotech ventures, elucidates much about this most exciting of human undertakings. In The Golden Helix, he provides an insider's view of biotechnology - an inherently fascinating confluence of science and industry made possible, in large measure, by his epoch-making work with enzymes and DNA, for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize.
Although science is at the center of this story, its principal subject is people - not only research scientists but business executives and managers as well. One of the most prominent and impressive figures in the story is Alejandro Zaffaroni, a remarkably successful and charismatic scientist-entrepreneur, whose vision and enthusiasm were instrumental in the founding of the DNAX Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Inc. Another remarkable character in this story is Robert P. Luciano, CEO of the Schering-Plough Corporation, the pharmaceutical company that acquired DNAX a little more than a year after its founding.
Although the history of DNAX is presented here in the greatest detail, various other prominent biotech ventures are profiled as well, including, most notably, ALZA, Genentech, Amgen, Chiron, and Regeneron.