The Golden Helix: Inside Biotech Ventures

by Arthur Kornberg

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.

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Arthur Kornberg was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1959 for his discovery of "the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)" together with Dr. Severo Ochoa of New York University. He was also awarded the Paul-Lewis Award in Enzyme Chemistry from the American Chemical Society in 1951, L.H.D. degree from Yeshiva University in 1962, as well as National Medal of Science in 1979. In 1991, Kornberg received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement[3] and the Gairdner Foundation Award in 1995.

His primary research interests were in biochemistry, especially enzyme chemistry, deoxyribonucleic acid synthesis (DNA replication) and studying the nucleic acids which control heredity in animals, plants, bacteria and viruses.

(Source: en.wikipedia.org)