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A founder treated with his own drug
At 3M he worked on the research and development side in adhesives, then moved to Abbott and ran part of its medical business. In his 50s he was recruited into the birth of biotechnology, an industry with an explosion of new entrants and remarkable investors. A man with a corporate career stepped into one of the wild west environments as an entrepreneur.
Amgen was founded in 1976 and is probably the earliest-founded independent biotechnology company that is still great today. Rathmann defended its patents like General Grant going forward, determined to defend them no matter what, because he knew that what the company was doing could affect lives.
At the very end of his own life he became a patient of EPO, the key product Amgen had built. He sat there getting his blood work done among other patients, and he would tell them that he had a little something to do with this.
How does EPO work in the body?
Erythropoietin is a hormone made mainly by the kidneys, and it signals the bone marrow to produce red blood cells. Amgen's version, epoetin alfa, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1989. It is used in conditions where the body makes too few red blood cells, such as anemia linked to kidney disease.
Why was early biotech called a wild west?
The industry was new, funded by investors betting on science that had not yet produced products. When Genentech went public in October 1980, its shares jumped from 35 dollars to more than 80 dollars within the first hour of trading. The sudden excitement drew in scientists, entrepreneurs, and money in large amounts.
How do companies make a protein like EPO?
The human gene for the protein is inserted into living cells that then produce it in large quantities. Amgen makes EPO in Chinese hamster ovary cells grown in large tanks. This approach, called recombinant DNA technology, began in the 1970s and let companies produce proteins that had earlier been extracted in tiny amounts from human or animal tissue.
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