Biotech is gonna be big. Really, really big. And we in the South
Valley must now wake up to the fact this amazing industry will
significantly reshape our region in the not-too-distant future.
Biotech is gonna be big. Really, really big. And we in the South Valley must now wake up to the fact this amazing industry will significantly reshape our region in the not-too-distant future.
It seems every day, the biotech buzz gets louder and louder. Just last month, San Francisco was chosen as the headquarters for the stem cell research institute. California created this $3 billion biotech initiative after voters in November approved Proposition 71. And a news story last week described how South Korean scientists for the first time cloned human stem cells tailored to match specific individual patients.
What seemed like science fiction not long ago is fast becoming science fact. Straight out of H.G. Well’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” the latest focus of foreboding over biotechnology involves the creation of animal-human genetic hybrids. Congress recently debated the very scary – and very real – possibility of these creatures known as chimeras.
The way things are heading, it doesn’t seem all that far-fetched to imagine folks undergoing regenerative cellular therapy to ward off old age. Biotech-induced immortality? Will human beings one day stay young virtually forever? Biotechnology might help us discover the fabled fountain of youth.
It’s truly scary what horrors this and other yet-to-be-imagined developments might spring forth from a biotech Pandora’s box. Scientists and politicians are now hotly debating many ethical questions of stem cell research and other biotech issues.
All this sounds fantastically futuristic. But historically speaking, biotechnology as a practical concept is as old as civilization. Nearly 10,000 years ago, people used biotechnology to improve their way of life. Of course, they didn’t use laboratories with multi-million-dollar machines. Their stone-age equipment was much more basic – but it worked.
Early biotech uses included bacterial fermentation to produce beer, wine and bread. And jump-starting the agricultural revolution, primitive farmers used the biotechnology techniques of selective breeding. They manipulated the genetics of domesticated plants and animals to produce particularly beneficial characteristics. Even the Bible’s book of Genesis details the biotechnological techniques used by the patriarch Jacob to raise stronger and healthier sheep.
About 4,000 B.C., humans started using biotechnology to invent new forms of dairy products. The Chinese found yogurt and cheese could be made from lactic-acid-producing bacteria.
It was only about 150 years ago, however, when the seeds of modern biotechnology were planted. In 1856, Gregor Mendel started exploring the laws of inheritance through his experiments with common garden pea plants.
Three years later, Charles Darwin played his part by publishing “The Origin of Species.” This revolutionary book gave the world an understanding of how evolution shapes the genetic lines of animals and plants. Long before human farmers, Mother Nature used her own techniques of selective breeding to assemble interesting new critters and vegetation.
In 1919, a Hungarian engineer named Karl Ereky first coined the word “biotechnology.” The term essentially described any industrial product produced from raw materials with the aid of living organisms – such as bacteria. After World War I, bacterial fermentation processes advanced enough to manufacture acetone out of starch.
World War II introduced the commercial manufacture of penicillin. The years following saw many advances in the use of biotechnology for pharmaceutical production.
In 1953, scientists James Watson and Francis Crick described the helical shape of the DNA molecule. This milestone for biotechnology gave researchers a clearer understanding of how genetic information can be manipulated to change characteristics in a species.
The Age of Biotechnology (as we now know it) began in 1978, in the laboratory of Herbert Boyer at the University of California at San Francisco. He and his team were the first to use genetic engineering to concoct a synthetic version of the human insulin gene that was inserted into the bacterium Escheria coli.
Since then, the world has seen many amazing developments in recombinant DNA technology. E. coli bacteria is now commonly used to produce insulin and other medicine in human form. And in 1992, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first genetically-altered food – Calgene Inc.’s “Flavr Savr” tomato.
The recent completion of the Human Genome Project at Stanford University and other locations now gives scientists and researchers a blueprint to develop genetic therapies and new drugs to make healthier humans. Stanford believes so much in the promise of life-based sciences that on Oct. 24, 2003, it opened the James H. Clark Center on its campus to serve as a focal point for bio-engineering sciences.
Using history as a yardstick, I see the coming biotech boom as being bigger than what happened with even the digital revolution. High-tech helped paved the way for biotech. Lightning fast computers are needed to process and store the massive amounts of data generated in genetic research.
But even more than computers and the Internet, the biotech industry will change the world in ways we can’t even imagine yet. It will transform humanity. It will literally transform life as we know it.
This week, business service firm Ernst & Young released a study on the future of biotech in the Bay Area. Last year, according to the report, revenue from the biotech industry here rose 18 percent to more than $12 billion – about a quarter of all the revenue generated in the United States from the rapidly growing industry.
That brings us back to the South Valley. Our region of coastal California is in a prime spot to participate in the biotech revolution only now beginning. We offer a lot here – particularly with our agricultural heritage – that makes us attractive as a location for start-up firms in this embryonic industry. But beginning right now, we
must market the South Valley better for biotech.
Next week, I’ll discuss the economic potential of biotechnology specifically for the South Valley area. Until then, consider the words I began this column with …
Biotech is gonna be big. Really, really big.
