In the fall of 1980, Genentech, Inc., a little-known California genetic
engineering company, became the overnight darling of Wall Street,
raising over $38 million in its initial public stock offering. Lacking
marketed products or substantial profit, the firm nonetheless saw its
share price escalate from $35 to $89 in the first few minutes of
trading, at that point the largest gain in stock market history. Coming
at a time of economic recession and declining technological
competitiveness in the United States, the event provoked banner
headlines and ignited a period of speculative frenzy over biotechnology
as a revolutionary means for creating new and better kinds of
pharmaceuticals, untold profit, and a possible solution to national
economic malaise. Drawing from an unparalleled collection of interviews
with early biotech players, Sally Smith Hughes offers the first
book-length history of this pioneering company, depicting Genentech's
improbable creation, precarious youth, and ascent to immense prosperity.
Hughes provides intimate portraits of the people significant to
Genentech's science and business, including cofounders Herbert Boyer and
Robert Swanson, and in doing so sheds new light on how personality
affects the growth of science. By placing Genentech's founders,
followers, opponents, victims, and beneficiaries in context, Hughes also
demonstrates how science interacts with commercial and legal interests
and university research, and with government regulation, venture
capital, and commercial profits. Integrating the scientific, the
corporate, the contextual, and the personal, Genentech tells the story
of biotechnology as it is not often told, as a risky and improbable
entrepreneurial venture that had to overcome a number of powerful forces
working against it.
