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.
