:''This article is primarily about Genetics Institute prior to its 1996 acquisition by Wyeth. For that successor company, see

Wyeth Wyeth, LLC was an American pharmaceutical company. The company was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1860 as ''John Wyeth and Brother''. It was later known, in the early 1930s, as American Home Products, before being renamed to Wyeth in ...

.'' Genetics Institute, Inc. was a biotechnology research and development company founded by

Thomas Maniatis Tom Maniatis (born May 8, 1943), is an American professor of molecular and cellular biology. He is a professor at Columbia University, and serves as the Scientific Director and CEO of the New York Genome Center. Education Maniatis received B.A ...

and

Mark Ptashne Mark Ptashne (born June 5, 1940, in Chicago) is a molecular biologist. He is the Ludwig Chair of Molecular Biology at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Ptashne grew up in Chicago. He earned his undergraduate degree at Re ...

, two Harvard molecular biologists, in 1980 in Massachusetts. Originally operating out of Ptashne's house in Boston, the company found more spacious quarters first in Boston and then Cambridge before expanding further. Gabriel Schmergel joined soon afterwards as CEO. Many leading scientists joined G.I. from academia and it proved to be a fertile source of patents for some time.

Historical background

One of the two largest national clusters of biotechnology in the U.S. (the other being the San Francisco Bay area), the greater Boston area has been the birthplace of many innovative corporations and non-profit research centers. Beginning in the late 1970s and 1980s, this biotech trend saw three early large for-profit corporations:

Biogen Biogen Inc. is an American multinational biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializing in the discovery, development, and delivery of therapies for the treatment of neurological diseases to patients worldwide. History ...

(now Biogen Idec),

Genzyme Genzyme was an American biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since its acquisition in 2011, Genzyme (also known as Genzyme Transgenics Corp or GTC Biotherapeutics) has been a fully owned subsidiary of Sanofi. In 2010, Genzyme ...

, and Genetics Institute. MIT's

Whitehead Institute Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is a non-profit research institute located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States that is dedicated to improving human health through basic biomedical research. It was founded as a fiscally indepen ...

was one of the seminal non-profit research centers in this field locally, among many others. Aside from MIT, Harvard, Boston University and several teaching hospitals including Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's were important contributors to the local field's development.

Products

G.I.'s Products (or potential candidates for products) included forms of

M-CSF The colony stimulating factor 1 (CSF1), also known as macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF), is a secreted cytokine which causes hematopoietic stem cells to differentiate into macrophages or other related cell types. Eukaryotic cells also ...

, interleukin-3, interleukin-11 (Neumega), bone morphogenetic protein 2,recombinant human Factor IX, and recombinant human Factor VIII (Recombinate); as well as tissue plasminogen activator and erythropoetin that both involved costly, complex lawsuits over patent infringement with competitors. Toward the end of its independent existence, G.I. created a program to share "a library of several thousand genes and their related proteins that could be scanned for potential new drugs." This program was based on a G.I. technology that allowed it to identify proteins secreted by cells and therefore more likely to be therapeutic in the body.

Dissolution

Wyeth (American Home Products at the time) acquired a majority interest in GI in 1992 and the remaining interest at the end of 1996.Genetics Institute, Inc. at ''History of Wyeth''
Fundinguniverse.com, Retrieved 25.10.2012 The company became part of Wyeth's Research division.

References

{{Reflist Biotechnology companies of the United States Biotechnology companies established in 1980 Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts Technology companies disestablished in 1996 Biotechnology companies disestablished in the 20th century 1996 mergers and acquisitions 1980 establishments in Massachusetts 1996 disestablishments in Massachusetts