Robert Swanson, co-founder of Genentech, the first company to exploit the new technology of genetic engineering, has died aged 52 from brain cancer. He was chief executive from 1976-90 and chairman from 1990-96. Last year, Genentech reaped more than $4bn from the new pharmaceuticals developed by its scientists.
Swanson was only 29 when he persuaded a distinguished biochemist, Herbert Boyer, at the University of California, to join him in creating a research-based company called Genentech in 1976. Boyer had developed one of the key techniques that opened up the possibility of the transfer of genes from one organism to another. He pioneered the use of restriction enzymes to snip segments of DNA out of cells.
The commercial exploitation of the technique by Swanson and Boyer marked the birth of the biotechnology industry, which now involves more than 1,500 companies worldwide. Genentech has remained one of the most successful, an achievement founded on a continuing series of major inventions that ushered in the age of protein therapeutics and molecular medicine.
In 1977, it devised a way of mass-producing the first human protein by splicing a gene into bacteria. The following year, Genentech created the first drug produced by genetic engineering, human-type insulin. It was also the first biotechnology company to sell its own drug, human growth hormone, for the treatment of children unable to produce enough of the hormone.
Swanson was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Florida, where his father worked for Eastern Airlines. He took degrees in chemistry and management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1970 he joined Citicorp Venture Capital in New York, and was given responsibility for opening the San Francisco office in 1973. He moved in 1975 to Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, the highly influential venture capital firm servicing the needs of the young hi-tech companies in California's Silicon Valley.
Growing excitement in the academic world about developments in microbiology sparked Swanson's curiosity as to whether they might prove marketable. He needed expert advice and persuaded Boyer to meet him for 10 minutes; it lasted three hours in a nearby tavern, during which the outline for a new type of biopharmaceutical company took shape. Boyer was impressed with the young man's grasp of the science behind his work, and that of Stanley Cohen, at Stanford University, who was experimenting with plasmids to sneak small packets of DNA into the genetic information of bacteria. The two scientists figured that plasmids could insert the genes snipped from a human cell into bacteria, turning the microbes into factories for making molecules defined by those genes.
Boyer was also attracted by the readiness of Swanson to stake his future on the fledgling science of genetic engineering and ditch his comfy job for a start-up company. Although significant advances were being made in the area of molecular biology, industry had yet to recognise the potential application technology to create completely new products. Swanson recalled that all the other academics he called had said commercial application of gene splicing was 10 years away: Boyer hadn't.
By the spring of 1976 Swanson had convinced Boyer's boss, Thomas Perkins, to cough up seed money for the Genentech venture. Swanson built a strong research team by offering recruits from universities the freedom to continue to publish their work, something most big drug companies were reluctant to allow. He also fostered a management style of informality that owed more to the campus than the secretive corporate world.
Genentech's first target - achieved in 1978 - was to develop a genetic technology to synthesise human-type insulin. In 1985, it became the first biotechnology company to launch its own biopharmaceutical product on the market. But its aggressive attitude under Swanson also generated controversy, particularly when it began to market its drugs.
An example involved the important development of a drug called tissue plasminogen activator (TPA), which helped restore blood flow after heart attacks. It has saved countless thousands of lives, but there were complaints from some hospitals about the pressure on them to buy TPA when a similar heart attack drug was available from another company at a lower price.
Last month, Genentech came to a $200m settlement after a nine-year dispute with the University of California over an alleged patent infringement surrounding the development of human growth hormone in the company's early days. Despite the controversy, without Swanson's vision the biotechnology industry would not be so advanced.
He is survived by his wife, Judy, and two daughters.
Robert Swanson, chemist and venture capitalist, born November 29 1947; died November 30 1999