Investor's Business Daily, June 11th, 2007
Herbert Boyer's curiosity led him to a goal that many fellow scientists mocked or feared.
Pursuing his passion, he became one of the world's pioneers in genetic medicine.
Boyer's drive and determination led to breakthroughs in recombinant DNA technology -- taking genes from one species to combine them with the DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, of another.
The result: new treatments for cruel diseases.
He co-founded the first company in the field, Genentech DNA, which is a powerhouse today.
It's known for its blockbuster anti-cancer drugs, Avastin and Herceptin. One of its scientific firsts was genetically engineered insulin for treatment of diabetes.
Boyer's legacy has changed medical science, says Michael Bishop, chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco. He worked with Boyer in the 1960s.
"Today you'd be hard-pressed to find a lab that doesn't use recombinant DNA," Bishop said.
Boyer, 70, did not respond to interview requests.
That's no surprise, says Bishop. Boyer never sought the limelight.
"He doesn't feel the need for communication," Bishop said. "He doesn't think he has anything more to say."
Boyer showed that reticence in the late 1960s. He was making $10,500 a year as an assistant professor at UCSF. In a 1994 interview for the Bancroft Library's oral history archives at the University of California, Berkeley, he said he'd been "a horrible teacher." He dreaded speaking before medical students.
"It just put the fear of God into me to face that group of iconoclastic individuals," Boyer said. "I thought, 'Let's get it over with so I can get on doing research.'"
Rush To Science
A high school football coach in Derry, Pa., sparked Boyer's passion for science. The student wanted to play pro football. He was good at the game. The coach was also Boyer's science teacher. He saw a talent too good for the gridiron.
The coach steered him to the lab. Boyer experienced the excitement of the experiment.
His thirst for scientific knowledge drove him on. He first learned about bacterial genetics at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa.
He earned a Ph.D. in bacteriology at the University of Pittsburgh, then did post-doctoral work at Yale. He started at UCSF with "an inherent interest in a seemingly abstruse problem," Bishop said.
Boyer never slowed down.
"Day in and day out, the practice of science is fun for people like us," Bishop said. "We like the daily planning, thinking and manipulation."
Fun, yes. But Boyer was tenacious. "Science was his all-consuming enterprise," Bishop said.
Boyer wanted his work to be socially valuable, Bishop says. The political and social ferment of the 1960s inspired the young professor.
"From the get-go, Herb mirrored what was going on in the outside world," Bishop said.
The public good became his mission, says Harold Evans, author of "They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators."
"His motivation was a combination of intellectual ambition and public spirit," Evans told IBD. "Boyer was emphatically not out to make a pile of money."
Boyer had to fight his share of battles. Academic peers thought his work might lead to Frankenstein-like contamination. At UCSF, "Herb was consigned to inferior quarters, bereft of virtually all professional amenities," Bishop said.
Boyer was unfazed. Never possessive or secretive about his work, he welcomed collaboration. He formed partnerships with those who could widen his horizons.
He and Bishop became intellectual comrades in their early years at UCSF. Unlike the 9-to-5 crowd, they'd work late, Bishop says. "We were preoccupied with getting our research careers started."
Boyer's next alliance began over corned beef and pastrami sandwiches. It was 1972.
At a conference in Hawaii, Boyer met Stanley Cohen, a professor of medicine at Stanford University.
At a local deli they discussed their interest in genetic research. Cohen suggested they pool their talents.
By 1973, they had their breakthrough. They'd discovered how to engineer cells to produce human substances.
But what to do with the knowledge?
In those days, academics frowned on profit from research. Boyer had pondered it. "I had had these little seeds of thought, fantasy more than anything," he said in 1994. "But I had no idea how you would start a company."
A meeting with 27-year-old Robert Swanson changed that.
Swanson worked for a venture capital firm. He saw the business potential of genetic engineering.
Swanson sought out Boyer. "He had read a lot about the technology and thought it might be useful," Boyer said.
They met at a San Francisco bar. "He explained venture capital to me," Boyer said.
Boyer had no business instinct, says Evans. "He was an altruist and idealist, a man in pursuit of knowledge," the author said.
Without Swanson, Genentech would not have started, Evans says. In 1976, the investor and scientist each put in $500 to launch the firm.
The partnership thrived, Evans says. Boyer and Swanson "were like Gilbert and Sullivan."
Genentech went public in 1980. An hour after the start of trading, the stock had jumped from its $35 issue price to $88.
Genentech produced a raft of gene-based drugs. Among them were synthetic insulin, human growth hormone and a clotting agent for hemophiliacs.
"I never in my wildest dreams ever thought it would amount to anything," Boyer said. "That's another example of my naivete."
The way he sees it, naivete is "the extra added ingredient in biotechnology." He may have been naive about the business of biotech, but he was clear that the purpose of science was to benefit humankind.
He told Swanson that Genentech's DNA research should be made public so other scientists could use it in their work. Swanson thought Genentech's trade secrets would be lost with that approach.
Boyer prevailed. But sharing knowledge didn't win him universal praise from other researchers. "Some jealous scientists were critical of Boyer," Evans said.
They were piqued because science and hard work made Boyer wealthy.
The attacks hurt. "I felt like I was just a criminal," Boyer said. "But I always felt that what I was doing was right."
Clear View
Swanson, who died in 1999, saw Boyer as a visionary.
"All the academics I called said commercial application of gene splicing was 10 years away," Swanson said. "Herb didn't."
Boyer gave as much to medicine as Marie Curie and Louis Pasteur, Evans says. With one difference: Boyer got his life's work to market.
He retired as Genentech's vice president in 1991. "It's been a wonderful experience, no question about it," he said.
"It's hard to imagine a greater scientific legacy," Bishop said. "His technology pervades all of biomedical science. It created a new industry."
