The human immune system is still the best resource for fighting disease. After a decade of failed promise, drugs that exploit it are finally flooding the market.
In this new world of often unbridled pessimism, it's worth noting that nobody ever guaranteed you could make a living, let alone a good one, by pushing the limits of technology. Take Nils Lonberg, for instance. Lonberg compares his company's story to Sleeping Beauty's, but his analogy is not precise. Sleeping Beauty, after all, was lucky enough to sleep through her ordeal. Lonberg and his colleagues were wide awake through theirs.
Lonberg was just a few years out of graduate school in 1989 when he signed on with GenPharm International, a company developing a class of drugs known as monoclonal antibodies-souped-up versions of the proteins produced by the immune system to fight disease. The goal was to genetically engineer a mouse with a human immune system, one that could be used to generate "fully human" monoclonal antibodies.
To read the entire article you must log in:
Most of our content — all daily news, blogs, and videos — is free. Magazine stories are paid. To read this story, you must have a subscription or you must use a reading credit. Registration to Technology Review is free and entitles registrants to three free reading credits.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
Our list of the 50 most innovative companies, including the following:
On Twitter
Become a Fan on Facebook
Subscribe to the Feed