Pharmaceutical history - November 29th

Robert "Bob" Swanson (29 November 1947–1999) was the cofounder of the biotechnology giant Genentech in 1976 with Herbert Boyer. Genentech is a pioneer in the field, and it remains one of the leading biotechnology companies in the world. He served as CEO of Genentech from 1976 to 1990, and as chairman from 1990 to 1996.

Bob Swanson graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then he acquired a B.S. degree in Chemistry as well as a master's degree in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

He is regarded as an instrumental figure in launching the biotechnology revolution. On December 6, 1999, he succumbed to brain cancer, at the age of 52.

His colleague Herbert Boyer is considered to be a pioneer in the field of recombinant DNA technology. In 1973, Boyer and his colleague Stanley Norman Cohen demonstrated that restriction enzymes could be used as "scissors" to cut DNA fragments of interest from one source, to be ligated into a similarly cut plasmid vector. While Cohen returned to the laboratory in academia, Swanson contacted Boyer to found the company. Boyer worked with Arthur Riggs and Keiichi Itakura from the Beckman Research Institute, and the group became the first to successfully express a human gene in bacteria when they produced the hormone somatostatin in 1977. David Goeddel and Dennis Kleid were then added to the group, and contributed to its success with synthetic human insulin in 1978.

Genentech became a subsidiary of Roche in 2009. Genentech Research and Early Development operates as an independent center within Roche. Genentech producs include Avastin, Herceptin, Rituxan, Polivy, , Xofluza, Venclexta, Lucentis, Tamiflu, Fuzeon, Invirase, Klonopin, Kytril, Naprosyn, Rocephin, Roferon-A, Romazicon, Valium, Xenical, among many others.

1982: Synthetic "human" insulin approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), partnered with insulin manufacturer Eli Lilly and Company, who shepherded the product through the FDA approval process. The product (Humulin) was licensed to and manufactured by Lilly, and was the first-ever approved genetically engineered human therapeutic.

1985: Protropin (somatrem): Supplementary growth hormone for children with growth hormone deficiency (ceased manufacturing 2004).

Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genentech
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