Betting on Biotech
Betting on Biotech

Author: Joseph Wong

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-10-15

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0801463386

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After World War II, several late-developing countries registered astonishingly high growth rates under strong state direction, making use of smart investment strategies, turnkey factories, and reverse-engineering, and taking advantage of the postwar global economic boom. Among these economic miracles were postwar Japan and, in the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called Asian Tigers—Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan—whose experiences epitomized the analytic category of the "developmental state." In Betting on Biotech, Joseph Wong examines the emerging biotechnology sector in each of these three industrial dynamos. They have invested billions of dollars in biotech industries since the 1990s, but commercial blockbusters and commensurate profits have not followed. Industrial upgrading at the cutting edge of technological innovation is vastly different from the dynamics of earlier practices in established industries. The profound uncertainties of life-science-based industries such as biotech have forced these nations to confront a new logic of industry development, one in which past strategies of picking and making winners have given way to a new strategy of throwing resources at what remain very long shots. Betting on Biotech illuminates a new political economy of industrial technology innovation in places where one would reasonably expect tremendous potential—yet where billion-dollar bets in biotech continue to teeter on the brink of spectacular failure.

From Breakthrough to Blockbuster
From Breakthrough to Blockbuster

Author: Donald L. Drakeman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0195084004

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"Beginning in the 1970s, several scientific breakthroughs promised to transform the creation of new medicines. As investors sought to capitalize on these Nobel Prize-winning discoveries, the biotech industry grew to thousands of small companies around the world. Each sought to emulate what the major pharmaceutical companies had been doing for a century or more, but without the advantages of scale, scope, experience, and massive resources. How could a large collection of small companies, most with fewer than 50 employees, compete in one of the world's most breathtakingly expensive and highly regulated industries? This book shows how biotech companies have met the challenge by creating nearly 40% more of the most important treatments for unmet medical needs. Moreover, they have done so with much lower overall costs. The book focuses on both the companies themselves and the broader biotech ecosystem that supports them. Its portrait of the crucial roles played by academic research, venture capital, contract research organizations, the capital markets, and pharmaceutical companies shows how a supportive environment enabled the entrepreneurial biotech industry to create novel medicines with unprecedented efficiency. In doing so, it also offers insights for any industry seeking to innovate in uncertain and ambiguous conditions. Looking to the future, it concludes that biomedical research will continue to be most effective in the hands of a large group of small companies as long as national healthcare policies allow the rest of the ecosystem to continue to thrive"--

Asian Biotech
Asian Biotech

Author: Aihwa Ong

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2010-11-05

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0822393204

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Providing the first overview of Asia’s emerging biosciences landscape, this timely and important collection brings together ethnographic case studies on biotech endeavors such as genetically modified foods in China, clinical trials in India, blood collection in Singapore and China, and stem-cell research in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. While biotech policies and projects vary by country, the contributors identify a significant trend toward state entrepreneurialism in biotechnology, and they highlight the ways that political thinking and ethical reasoning are converging around the biosciences. As ascendant nations in a region of postcolonial emergence, with an “uncanny surplus” in population and pandemics, Asian countries treat their populations as sources of opportunity and risk. Biotech enterprises are allied to efforts to overcome past humiliations and restore national identity and political ambition, and they are legitimized as solutions to national anxieties about food supplies, diseases, epidemics, and unknown biological crises in the future. Biotechnological responses to perceived risks stir deep feelings about shared fate, and they crystallize new ethical configurations, often re-inscribing traditional beliefs about ethnicity, nation, and race. As many of the essays in this collection illustrate, state involvement in biotech initiatives is driving the emergence of “biosovereignty,” an increasing pressure for state control over biological resources, commercial health products, corporate behavior, and genetic based-identities. Asian Biotech offers much-needed analysis of the interplay among biotechnologies, economic growth, biosecurity, and ethical practices in Asia. Contributors Vincanne Adams Nancy N. Chen Stefan Ecks Kathleen Erwin Phuoc V. Le Jennifer Liu Aihwa Ong Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner Kaushik Sunder Rajan Wen-Ching Sung Charis Thompson Ara Wilson

Our Posthuman Future
Our Posthuman Future

Author: Francis Fukuyama

Publisher: Profile Books

Published: 2017-06-15

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1847653707

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Is a baby whose personality has been chosen from a gene supermarket still a human? If we choose what we create what happens to morality? Is this the end of human nature? The dramatic advances in DNA technology over the last few years are the stuff of science fiction. It is now not only possible to clone human beings it is happening. For the first time since the creation of the earth four billion years ago, or the emergence of mankind 10 million years ago, people will be able to choose their children's' sex, height, colour, personality traits and intelligence. It will even be possible to create 'superhumans' by mixing human genes with those of other animals for extra strength or longevity. But is this desirable? What are the moral and political consequences? Will it mean anything to talk about 'human nature' any more? Is this the end of human beings? Our Posthuman Future is a passionate analysis of the greatest political and moral problem ever to face the human race.

The Messenger
The Messenger

Author: Peter Loftus

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2022-07-26

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 164782320X

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The inside story of an unprecedented feat of science and business. At the start of 2020, Moderna was a biotech unicorn with dim prospects. Yes, there was the promise of its disruptive innovation that could transform medicine by using something called messenger RNA, one of the body's building blocks of life, to combat disease. But its stock was under water. There were reports of a toxic work culture. And despite ten years of work, the company was still years away from delivering its first product. Investors were getting antsy, or worse, skeptical. Then the pandemic hit, and Moderna, at first reluctantly, became a central player in a global drama—a David to Big Pharma's Goliaths—turning its technology toward breaking the global grip of the terrible disease. By year's end, with the virus raging, Moderna delivered one of the world's first Covid-19 vaccines, with a stunningly high rate of protection. The achievement gave the world a way out of a crippling pandemic while validating Moderna's technology, transforming the company into a global industry power. Biotech, and the venture capital community that fuels it, will never be the same. Wall Street Journal reporter Peter Loftus, veteran reporter covering the pharmaceutical and biotech industries and part of a Pulitzer Prize–finalist team, brings the inside story of Moderna, from its humble start at a casual lunch through its heady startup days, into the heart of the pandemic and beyond. With deep access to all of the major players, Loftus weaves a tale of science and business that brings to life Moderna's monumental feat of creating a vaccine that beat back a deadly virus and changed the business of medicine forever. The Messenger spans a decade and is full of heroic efforts by ordinary people, lucky breaks, and life-and-death decisions. It's the story of a revolutionary idea, the evolution of a cutting-edge American industry, and one of the great achievements of this century.

Frankenstein's Cat
Frankenstein's Cat

Author: Emily Anthes

Publisher: Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2013-03-12

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 142994952X

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Winner of 2014 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Best Young Adult Science Book Longlisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award One of Nature's Summer Book Picks One of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Spring 2013 Science Books For centuries, we've toyed with our creature companions, breeding dogs that herd and hunt, housecats that look like tigers, and teacup pigs that fit snugly in our handbags. But what happens when we take animal alteration a step further, engineering a cat that glows green under ultraviolet light or cloning the beloved family Labrador? Science has given us a whole new toolbox for tinkering with life. How are we using it? In Frankenstein's Cat, the journalist Emily Anthes takes us from petri dish to pet store as she explores how biotechnology is shaping the future of our furry and feathered friends. As she ventures from bucolic barnyards to a "frozen zoo" where scientists are storing DNA from the planet's most exotic creatures, she discovers how we can use cloning to protect endangered species, craft prosthetics to save injured animals, and employ genetic engineering to supply farms with disease-resistant livestock. Along the way, we meet some of the animals that are ushering in this astonishing age of enhancement, including sensor-wearing seals, cyborg beetles, a bionic bulldog, and the world's first cloned cat. Through her encounters with scientists, conservationists, ethicists, and entrepreneurs, Anthes reveals that while some of our interventions may be trivial (behold: the GloFish), others could improve the lives of many species-including our own. So what does biotechnology really mean for the world's wild things? And what do our brave new beasts tell us about ourselves? With keen insight and her trademark spunk, Anthes highlights both the peril and the promise of our scientific superpowers, taking us on an adventure into a world where our grandest science fiction fantasies are fast becoming reality.

Investing in Biotech
Investing in Biotech

Author: David G. Harper

Publisher: Raincoast Books

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9781551924403

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"Helps you understand one of the most discussed but least understood sectors of the knowledge economy." - preface.

Biotechnology in the Time of COVID-19
Biotechnology in the Time of COVID-19

Author: Jeremy M. Levin

Publisher: Rosetta Books

Published: 2020-05-31

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0795352980

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47 leaders from across the biotechnology industry tell their stories of battling the global scourge of COVID-19. Pandemics have killed at least a half billion people over the past two millennia. But in the age of biotechnology, humanity is no longer defenseless. The biotechnology industry is a diverse community of scientists, doctors, patients, entrepreneurs, investors, bankers, analysts and reporters, all committed to treating and curing disease. Over the past forty years, it has produced medical advances at an electrifying rate. As the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, hundreds of companies quickly pivoted to combating the virus. The contributors to this book offer inside views of this seminal industry, with historical and personal perspectives, lessons learned, and looks into the future. Diverse as these leaders are, they are united by their conviction that science and medicine will light humanity’s way to greater health and longevity.

Preparing for Future Products of Biotechnology
Preparing for Future Products of Biotechnology

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0309452058

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Between 1973 and 2016, the ways to manipulate DNA to endow new characteristics in an organism (that is, biotechnology) have advanced, enabling the development of products that were not previously possible. What will the likely future products of biotechnology be over the next 5â€"10 years? What scientific capabilities, tools, and/or expertise may be needed by the regulatory agencies to ensure they make efficient and sound evaluations of the likely future products of biotechnology? Preparing for Future Products of Biotechnology analyzes the future landscape of biotechnology products and seeks to inform forthcoming policy making. This report identifies potential new risks and frameworks for risk assessment and areas in which the risks or lack of risks relating to the products of biotechnology are well understood.

Biotechnology: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications
Biotechnology: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications

Author: Management Association, Information Resources

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2019-06-07

Total Pages: 2220

ISBN-13: 152258904X

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Biotechnology can be defined as the manipulation of biological process, systems, and organisms in the production of various products. With applications in a number of fields such as biomedical, chemical, mechanical, and civil engineering, research on the development of biologically inspired materials is essential to further advancement. Biotechnology: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source for the latest research findings on the application of biotechnology in medicine, engineering, agriculture, food production, and other areas. It also examines the economic impacts of biotechnology use. Highlighting a range of topics such as pharmacogenomics, biomedical engineering, and bioinformatics, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for engineers, pharmacists, medical professionals, practitioners, academicians, and researchers interested in the applications of biotechnology.