（生机勃勃的蒋家庄，图片来自蒋高明的博客） 初来乍到科网时，看了蒋高明老师的文章尽是些农场啊、生态啊、养鸡养牛啊什么的，给人一种不那么高端的感觉，心里想此人是个正儿八经的民科，比较低端。后来留意到蒋研究员不仅是首席，还是博导什么的，一大堆的职称（ http://www.bbioo.com/bioer/2008/22125.shtm ），看的我眼花缭乱，最重要的是还是科网博客特别推荐的专家。回过头想想我那时还太年轻，真是有眼不识泰山，看低了蒋研究员 今天看到蒋老师的博文我组投稿经历中一稿接收的高分SCI论文（ http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=361351 ）中介绍的一篇文章Biomass energy utilization in rural areas may contribute to alleviating energy crisis and global warming: A case study in a typical agro-village of Shandong, China，彻底否定了之前认为蒋老师的研究有点绣腿花拳的看法，无知者无畏嘛，呵呵。花了近一个上午的时间仔细研读了这篇论文，过了一个没有纳米、基因和PCR、假说的周末，感到很放松，文章中充斥着的秸秆、牛粪和沼气使我倍感亲切（谁让俺高家都是农民出身呢~）。 我相信科网中有近90%的人都在异地他乡工作，近一点的可能是北井、上海和内蒙古uu，远一点的有可能是米国、英格儿，或奥大力（还没听说有在太空中上班的科网博主），但很少有人回自己家乡搞科研的，像蒋首席研究员这样能使用大量国家资源游刃有余地建设蒋家庄的更是凤毛麟角。蒋研究员通过这种方式不仅实现了报效国家的高级理想，还实现了自己衣锦还乡的儿时梦想，确实值得广大博主学习，特别适合刚下两个蛋还没把窝暖热的龟龟们。 将研究员能使一批接着一批的研究生、博士后到蒋家庄从事真正意义上的调查和科研是需要勇气和毅力地，当然更重要的是能力（什么时候俺也整个高家庄示范基地，哈哈）。希望蒋老师的这种能缓解能源压力、减少碳排放的生态系统模型尽快得以推广。 向蒋研究员致敬！ 博文版论文： 从南马庄到蒋家庄： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=332795 广西、河南、山东三省农民互助合作社代表参观弘毅生态农场： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=324879 未来的生态农庄： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=232002 中美来宾欢聚弘毅生态农场： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=332834 不进农村，学问就没有立脚点： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=45856 农民为何不愿搞绿色食品： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=22244 中国农业：小农户还是大农场？： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=14651 关于加快山东省生态循环农业建设的建议： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=6048 食物安全与生态安全可共赢： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=5767 让生态农业循环起来： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=3967 把秸秆变成牛羊的面包： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=3811 Biomass energy utilization in rural areas may contribute to alleviating energy crisis and global warming: A case study in a typical agro-village of Shandong, China
Biotechnology All-Stars Eric W. Pfeiffer, 05.31.99 George Rathman is the Bill Gates of biotechnology...if Bill Gates would look and act a bit more paternal. Like his high tech counterpart, Rathmann has an uncanny knack for timing: He pinpointed a new industry ripe for rapid growth, one that needed both a technologist and an entrepreneur. Like Gates, he built the single most prosperous company his industry has ever known, the Southern California-based Amgen. And like Gates, he has become a legend in the process, taking on, at times, a godlike aura in the eyes of industry insiders. When you walk into a room, even if you don't know who George is, you know he is someone, says one former colleague. You look into his eyes and see there is a lot going on in there. When the founders of Amgen picked Rathmann to be the company's first CEO and employee in 1980, the biotechnology industry was just beginning. While Genentech and Cetus (part of Chiron) had proven that the new science could indeed be turned into a business, the industry was long on hope, and short on commercial products. The few biotech companies that did exist were run by scientists with little business background, and even though the industry was desperate for commercial products, RD was typically run by academics. Enter Rathmann, now 71, who had both the science credentials (a B.S. in chemistry from Northwestern, which he earned at the ripe age of 20, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Princeton) and the business acumen gleaned from 21 years at 3M, where he learned how to turn science into commercial offerings and codeveloped, among other products, Scotchgard. Then after a brief, unsuccessful stint at Litton Industries, he became head of diagnostic research at Abbott Laboratories, where he again practiced the fine art of managing RD. George clearly had a grasp of business, and he was a true scientist, says Gordon Binder, the current CEO of Amgen, who was CFO under Rathmann. That was a tough combination to find. A lot of people can't do both. I came as a rude shock to many people in biotech, recalls Rathmann, who grew up in Wisconsin and whose teenage penchant for chemistry often led to dangerous pyrotechnic displays. There was a very strong sentiment that you needed a top scientist to run your biotech company. And then there was a strong countersentiment that said, 'That's a mistake, a scientist is going to take you to the poorhouse. What you need is a person really good at marketing.' As it turned out, the answer lay in between. Rathmann's combination of science and business was precisely what biotech needed: someone who could inject a little dollars and sense into the RD process but who also understood the scientific method and was willing to shield scientists from nitpicking middle managers and the burden of the bottom line. George saw from the very beginning, says Binder, that the company with the best RD would win. Operating within this duality was not always easy. One time, after giving a presentation to his scientists, Rathmann was waylaid by one of his managers. Remembers Rathmann, He came in and said, 'George, some people were rather offended by your presentation. We've got to be careful of the 'p' word. And I said, 'Thanks for telling me. Christ, I don't want to smother feedback, even if it hurts a little bit. But tell me what the 'p' word is that you're talking about.' ' Products . You used the word products .' Golden Throat managed to do what nobody had before: convince the world's richest man to invest in biotech. Yet for all his support of research, Rathmann's most important legacy to biotech is financial. In an industry known for its legendary burn rates, and for a company that was more than once down to less than six months of cash in the bank, Rathmann managed to raise crucial capital without, for the most part, giving away the company jewels. The Golden Throat, as he is often called, raised $19 million for Amgen, at the time the largest first-round financing for any biotech venture. By his own account, that investment was the single most important event in Amgen's history. We had $19 million to do what we thought were the very best things to do, he says. We didn't have to sign on with a pharmaceutical firm and do their bidding. That capital, combined with Rathmann's support for RD, ultimately produced Amgen's two billion-dollar drugs (Epogen for anemia and Neupogen to stimulate white blood cell growth). Rathmann's other contribution to biotech was his uncanny ability to recruit the best and brightest. When Lowell Sears was looking to get out of a career in oil and move to biotech, he hooked up with Rathmann through a mutual friend. We were supposed to go out for a 45-minute breakfast, which turned into three hours, remembers Sears, who in 1986 was hired as treasurer and then served as CFO at Amgen from 1988 to 1994. George sold me on the vision of the future, on the company's potential. His energy, his intellect, and his interest in people convinced me. Rathmann had a knack for identifying people who could grow with the growing company. (He would even hire smart, driven individuals without knowing exactly what they would do once they started work.) He recruited Kirby Alton, who started out as a molecular biologist and is now senior VP of development at Amgen. He also helped hire the two scientists instrumental in developing Amgen's blockbuster drugs, as well as Phil Whitcome, who went on to cofound Neurogen. Of course, even a record like Rathmann's has a few blemishes. In 1985 Rathmann cut a complicated, many would say bad, corporate partnership deal with Johnson Johnson to share in the revenues of Epogen. The result was an accounting and management nightmare that is still not resolved. The JJ debacle was one of the most difficult times for Rathmann and Amgen, and it was one time where Rathmann's diplomacy and enthusiasm did not win the day. In the JJ situation, George got very frustrated, says Kathleen Wiltsey, who worked with Rathmann on Amgen's first product. He was very disappointed, distraught, but he never once said, 'I can't stand those JJ people.' Rathmann, says Wiltsey, is too much of a humanist to bad-mouth colleagues, although he is emotional and has been known to raise his voice a few decibels, particularly when he's defending his company. Bill Gates has achieved many things in his career, but the label humanist is not one of them. On the other hand, Gates has managed to do what Rathmann and other startup CEOs have not: remain with his company as it left behind the fast-growing startup years and entered maturity. After 10 years of service, Rathmann left Amgen in 1990. By all accounts Amgen was Rathmann's extended family, and the family was getting big--too big and mature for a single patriarch. He's wonderful at managing uncertainty. But as soon as things become routine, it doesn't excite him, says Wiltsey. After only a brief stab at retirement, Rathmann became CEO of a second startup, the Bothell, Washington-based biotech company Icos, for which he raised $33 million, breaking his record set at Amgen. Icos, believe it or not, is where the lives of Rathmann and Gates literally meet. The Golden Throat managed to do what nobody had before: convince the world's richest man to invest in biotech. In 1990 Gates invested $5 million in Icos, and in subsequent years has invested more than $17 million, Rathmann says. Most of those who know Rathmann well are betting he will be as successful with his second startup as he was with his first. Granted, some have criticized Rathmann for becoming starstruck, for courting Gates and packing the Icos board with famous names like former Citicorp CEO Walter Wriston. Yet, if biotechnology is, as many say, primed to enter its golden age, then Rathmann's effort to broaden its leadership may be just another example of his legendary timing. Gordon Binder Binder is among biotech's most respected business minds, owing to his shepherding of Thousand Oaks, California-based Amgen to the $2.5 billion company it is today. He joined as CFO in 1982, and six years later, he took the helm from biotech legend George Rathmann to serve as CEO. Binder's ability to combine financial management with a clear biotech vision is nearly unrivaled. Gordon is a fabulous thinker and a terrific financial mind, says biotech investor Jeffrey Casdin. If he has a strategy involving a thousand steps, he'll personally figure out each one. Herbert Boyer Stanley N. Cohen These two M.D.'s created the biotech tool--recombinant DNA--that launched genetic engineering and biotechnology as we know it. In 1973 Boyer, a biochemist, genetic engineer, and professor at the University of California at San Francisco, teamed with Stanford genetics professor Stanley N. Cohen, a pioneer in the area of antibiotic resistance, to make history. As of 1997, their gene-splicing technology had been licensed to more than 470 companies, including Amgen and Eli Lilly, and spawned scores of molecular medicines--netting their two universities $241 million in royalties. Their accomplishments don't end there. Cohen, now 64, and Boyer, now 62, are both part of a select group of luminaries who have won both the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology. In 1976, Boyer cofounded Genentech. He is still a company director. Brook Byers Byers, 53, is the most active venture investor in biotech on the planet. In his 20 years in biotech financing, the bright and driven Byers has backed more than 50 life sciences companies, a record second to none. In 1972 his E.E. from Georgia Tech and M.B.A. from Stanford won him a post at Silicon Valley's marquee venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. In 1978 Byers met two scientists from the University of California at San Diego and together they started Hybritech, the first antibody company. He took a leave of absence from KPCB to run it as its first president for six months. Hybritech went on to be a public company and was acquired by Lilly for $300-plus million in 1986. Since then, most of the life sciences ventures Byers has touched have turned to gold. One is IDEC Pharmaceuticals, which he started from scratch in 1998, hiring a team of scientists to work on biotech treatments for lymphoma, the disease that took his mother's life 20 years ago. Stanley Crooke Crooke, chairman and CEO of Isis Pharmaceuticals in Carlsbad, California, is biotech's premier mind in antisense drug development. The idea behind anti-sense is to produce drugs so disease specific they have few side effects, yet so adaptable they can be engineered to treat everything from psoriasis to cancer. Analysts and colleagues say it would be hard to find anyone better suited to the antisense quest. Crooke has, at age 54, an encyclopedic memory of everything ever published about antisense and is himself one of the most published CEOs in biotechnology. Tenacity, formidable intellect, and business acumen have made Crooke a success in a tough business. When he gets an idea it's like taking a T-bone away from a dog, says Mark Skaletsky, an Isis board member. Carl Feldbaum Feldbaum is biotech's chief mouthpiece on Capitol Hill. The soft-spoken lobbyist, 55, is president of the Bio-technology Industry Organization {BIO}, the umbrella organization for more than 850 companies, academic institutions, and biotech centers nationally. He helped create BIO in 1993 by combining two competing advocacy groups--the Association of Biotechnology Companies and the Industrial Biotechnology Association--into one. Feldbaum gets the credit for merging the two into a perfect Washington-style marriage. It wasn't easy. It was like combining Don Quixote and Don Corleone, Feldbaum says. A tough job, but Feldbaum has had tough jobs before. Prior to heading BIO, he served as a special Watergate prosecutor, as an assistant secretary of energy during the Carter era, and as Senator Arlen Specter's chief of staff. Fred Frank Stelios Papadopoulos Frank and Papadopoulos are the dynamic duo of Wall Street. Frank is a 67-year-old vice chair and director of Lehman Brothers. He is generally referred to as the dean of the investment bankers working the biotechnology sector, says G. Steven Burrill, a merchant banker in the biotech industry. And no wonder. Frank has engineered--and reengineered--the complex financial architecture of biotech, overseeing seminal deals like the Genentech and Hoffmann-La Roche Holdings merger. Among the other high-profile notches on his belt: Frank took public Applied Biosystems, the first gene-sequencing machine manufacturer {now owned by Perkin-Elmer}. And in 1993, he worked with Craig Venter and William Haseltine in a $125 million collaboration between Human Genome Sciences and SmithKline Beecham. At the time, this was the largest biotech alliance in history. Papadopoulos so trumpeted the virtues of biotech stocks on Wall Street that without him, most agree, the industry never would have been capitalized. A Ph.D. in biophysics, Papadopoulos was bitten by the biotech bug in 1980 when he saw a New York Times article on Genentech's IPO pinned to a bulletin board. He soon swapped his lab coat for a suit and tie, joining Donaldson, Lufkin Jenrette in 1985 as its first biotechnology analyst. Papadopoulos, 50, has played a crucial role in the funding of such companies as Agouron, Icos, and Exelixis. Had it not been for Wall Street, there would not be biotech,he says. It's the intersection of exciting ideas with people on the capital side willing to take risks. Dave Goeddel Goeddel is not only, as one biotech insider puts it, a brilliant, brilliant scientist but he was likely biotech's original brilliant scientist. In 1978 he was Genentech's third employee, and the company's first scientist who was not affiliated with a university. He worked on insulin--the company's (and biotech's) first product--as well as on growth hormone and interferon, two other Genentech early breakthroughs. Goeddel was just a powerhouse, a power cloner, says Fred Dorey, ex-president of the Bay Area Bioscience Center. He was a driven, very focused, and extremely hardworking industrial scientist. Goeddel, now 48, spent more than 15 years at Genentech. In 1991 he cofounded Tularik, based in South San Francisco, where he's now CEO. Maurice Hilleman Colleagues refer to him as the godfather of vaccines, but Hilleman is also a godfather of sorts to the millions of children who have thrived thanks to his work on pediatric vaccines. From 1957, Hilleman, now 79 and the director of the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research, has devoted his career at Merck to developing safe vaccines for childhood diseases. In fact, the familiar mumps, measles, and rubella shots administered to every American baby today are the products of his research. In the past decades, Hilleman also has made his mark on vaccines for adult diseases, including hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chicken pox, Japanese B encephalitis, and others. Leroy Hood A toolmaker of sorts, Hood is responsible for the development of four vital biotech tools: the DNA sequencer, DNA synthesizer, protein sequencer, and protein synthesizer. Without Hood's inventions, deciphering the human genome would be akin to reading ancient Sanskrit without a lexicon. An early advocate of the Human Genome Project and its commercial applications, Hood, now 60, founded a leading molecular instrumentation company, Applied Biosystems, in Foster City, California, in 1980 (now a division of Perkin-Elmer). He also was a scientific founder of Amgen, SyStemix, and T Cell Sciences. Hood now heads the molecular biology department at the University of Washington School of Medicine, where he has created one of the nation's hottest interdisciplinary departments for combined research in chemistry, computer science, engineering, applied physics, and biology. Eric Lander Lander is a--if not the--driving intellectual force in the field of genome research.As the director of his own research center, the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the lanky 42-year-old has a list of accomplishments in genomics few can rival. Since 1992, Lander, a Rhodes scholar with a Ph.D. in mathematics from Oxford, has been in on building the government's Human Genome Project maps. His Whitehead Genome Center also has built most of the DNA maps of the human and mouse chromosomes, making it possible to trace heredity, locate genes, and organize the reading of the complete sequence. He was involved in launching the drive to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms, called SNPs, which account for variations in genes. In 1993 he co-founded Millennium Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, a leading genomics company, where he serves on the board. And oh, this former recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant is a popular professor, too. His Millennium cofounder, Mark Levin, says Lander is theatrical in the classroom, pacing the room like Phil Donahue as he lectures. Robert Langer Langer arrives on our list thanks to his pioneering discoveries in the field of tissue engineering and plastic-based drug delivery systems. His work at MIT--he is the Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering there--with polymers (that's plastics to us layfolk) has given rise to numerous medical breakthroughs. By combining polymer scaffolds with cells, he has discovered a way to build real tissue in the human body. Langer also has helped to develop varieties of patch, implant, and even aerosol-type therapies. A Langer-inspired treatment for brain cancer, for example, was the first polymer-based treatment to deliver chemotherapy to a tumor site. The 50-year-old scientist originally combined his work in bioengineering with that of the cellular biologist Joseph Vacanti; he now shares or solely holds more than 350 patents. Mark Levin Levin's knack for cutting deals--big ones--has put his six-year-old company, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, on the map and lands him on our Top 25 list. This 48-year-old former venture capitalist turned CEO forged the biggest biopharmaceutical alliance to date last September: a $465 million agreement with German drug behemoth Bayer AG. Since founding his Cambridge, Massachusetts-based genomics company in 1993, Levin has accumulated $1.3 billion in contracts from pharmaceutical partnerships. It's not just the magnitude but the quality of Levin's deals that make him the envy of fellow biotechies. Levin inks deals while maintaining Millennium's rights. Wall Street has taken notice. In the current poor climate for biotech stocks, Millennium's shares are up 250%. At its 1996 IPO, Millennium was trading at $12. Now it's hovering at $30-plus. The company's valuation exceeds $1 billion. Arthur D. Levinson Genentech surprised industry observers in 1995 by tapping Levinson--a scientist with relatively little management experience-- to become the firm's CEO. He has since silenced skeptics, transforming Genentech from an aging, financially stagnant operation with a flagging product line into an industry heavyweight once more. What Levinson has done, says Joel Sendek, analyst for Gerard, Klauer, Mattison, is turn the Titanic around. In the last two years, Genentech has launched two successful monoclonal antibody drugs, Rituxan, a treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and Herceptin, which inhibits the expression of the gene associated with an aggressive type of breast cancer. Both drugs are products of what Genentech calls its BioOncology research program, part of the long-range strategy Levinson developed after he took the helm. His emphasis on increased RD and the renegotiation of the firm's Roche Holdings buyout agreement are behind such successes. H. Stewart Parker We hate to admit it, but the 43-year-old Parker lands on our list because she is one of the few female CEOs in the biotech business. While that distinction may be dubious, her accomplishments are not. She has led two biotech companies--Immunex and Targeted Genetics--to success, a feat few men in the industry can claim. An M.B.A. from the University of Washington, Parker (the H stands for Haley, but she prefers to go by Stewart) joined Seattle-based Immunex in 1981; she was the company's first employee. In her decade with Immunex, which develops immune system drugs, she served as vice president of corporate development. In 1992 Parker took on the risky sector of gene therapy when she spun Targeted Genetics out of Immunex. Her colleagues credit her with Targeted Genetics' survival; it's one of only two of the original gene therapy pure plays to last through the decade. Edward Penhoet Penhoet, 58, is one of the three pioneering biologists behind Chiron, the billion- dollar Emeryville, California-based company responsible for a wide variety of genetically engineered drugs and blood-testing products. More important, Penhoet recognized that advances in molecular biology could produce preventive drugs, replacing the time- honored trial and error approach to drug development. With fellow biologists William Rutter and Pablo Valenzuela, Penhoet launched Chiron in 1981. People thought I'd lost my mind, he says. There was a substantial gulf between university research and the business world. Thanks to companies like Chiron, that's no longer the case. After serving with Rutter and Valenzuela as co-CEO of Chiron for more than a decade, Penhoet left last year to become dean of the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. Dennis Purcell No one is more bullish or brash on biotech than Purcell. This Wall Street firecracker is managing director of Hambrecht Quist's life sciences department, making him the industry's biggest cheerleader in the biggest life sciences banking outfit in the country. Since 1994 when he joined HQ, Purcell has completed more than 200 transactions worth more than $10 billion. Under his tenure as managing director, HQ has been the lead underwriter of life sciences four years running. Cynthia Robbins-Roth Consultant, writer, and self-proclaimed biogoddess, Robbins-Roth has been in the eye of the biotech hurricane from the start. Since Genentech first recruited her in 1981 as a lab scientist, the 46-year-old Robbins-Roth has had a seat at nearly every biotech table: researcher, business developer, consultant, journalist. These days she works largely as a writer; she founded and has contributed to three industry publications: BioWorld, BioPeople, and BioVenture View. She is a columnist for Forbes and a guest editor for Forbes ASAP on this issue. William Rutter Rutter is not only the cofounder and chairman of Chiron, one of the largest biotech companies in the world, but one of the premier minds in biotech research. While he was a professor in the 1970s at the University of California at San Francisco, his lab succeeded in cloning the human insulin gene. Next he developed a vaccine for hepatitis B (in collaboration with Pablo Valenzuela). Rutter, now 71, also is credited with pioneering Chiron's research into retroviruses, which led the company to discover the viral cause of AIDS: Chiron was the first company to find the HIV virus sequence. Roger Salquist Salquist is the man behind the first-ever agricultural biotech product, the Flavr Savr tomato. And while you can't find this delicacy at your local market--it was just too expensive to produce--Salquist nevertheless gets credit for producing the first genetically engineered food. A one-time CFO for a biopesticide company, Salquist was hired to run a California-based startup called Calgene in 1984. He ran Calgene as chairman and CEO until it was bought by Monsanto in 1996, overseeing the development of the Flavr Savr. The tremendously arrogant--but infinitely charming--Salquist, 57, is now a managing partner of Bay City Capital, a private merchant bank in San Francisco devoted to funding life sciences companies. He cofounded it in 1997. Randy Scott Roy Whitfield As founders of the only genomics company ever to consistently turn a profit, Scott, 41, and Whitfield, 45, have earned their bragging rights. Their Incyte Pharmaceuticals in Palo Alto, California, reported profits of $6.9 million in 1997 and $15.5 million (excluding acquisition-related charges) a year later. Whitfield, CEO, and Scott, president and chief scientist, figured out how to make money in genomics by tossing out the tried-and-true business model for biotech companies. Instead of developing its own drugs, Incyte opted to create, package, and sell its gene-sequencing information to pharmaceutical firms. Voil! Profits. Robert Swanson Swanson is the visionary who took biotech out of the lab and into the business world. The now famous story goes like this: In 1976, Swanson, then a 29-year-old venture capitalist with Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, heard of a revolutionary discovery known as recombinant DNA, one of the key tools of genetic engineering. He courted one of its two codiscoverers, University of California at San Francisco's Herbert Boyer, and convinced him that his gene-splicing technology had commercial value. Genentech was subsequently born, and Swanson quit Kleiner Perkins to become CEO. By 1978 insulin--biotechnology's first genetically developed product--was successfully produced using recombinant DNA technology. Bob is the father of the industry, says investment banker Stelios Papadopoulos. He saw it all before anybody else did. He is now chairman of Tularik, a company with strong ties to Genentech. Henri Termeer Termeer gets kudos for being a CEO who understands how to turn a little biotech company into an industry powerhouse. His Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Genzyme is one of the biggest in the business--its market cap is $4.2 billion, and revenues last year reached an impressive $670 million. His secret? He's got a few. First Termeer, 53, created separate divisions at Genzyme, each with its own specialty--drugs, diagnostics, and surgical products. This allowed the company to engage in creative RD financing and offset divisional losses. The Netherlands native aggressively pursued licensing agreements with other companies, a unique strategy in an industry traditionally focused on internal drug development. And he proved that orphan drugs-- those targeted at rare diseases big pharma tends to ignore--can be moneymakers. Craig Venter One of the true mavericks in biotech, Venter, 52, is out to beat the feds in the mapping of human genes. As founder of Celera Genomics, a private firm funded by Perkin-Elmer, Venter claims Celera will complete the sequencing of the human genome by the end of 2001--beating the government-funded Human Genome Project to the punch by two years. Critics call the Celera project folly, but the company's formation in 1998 spurred the government to move its own timeline for gene mapping up two years. A Vietnam vet with a Ph.D. in pharmacology and physiology, Venter's contribution to the world of gene sequencing has been phenomenal, if controversial. As investment banker Stelios Papadopoulos puts it, He's nuts, but he belongs on ASAP's top 25 list. Alejandro Zaffaroni Zaffaroni, 76, is the entrepreneur whose ideas and discoveries have given rise to more biotech companies than any other person in the field. This native of Uruguay and 1995 recipient of the National Medal of Technology has conceived or collaborated on more than 40 patents and hundreds of scientific processes and products--ranging from the Pill to the Nicoderm patch. Lately, the unretirable Zaffaroni focuses much of his time on developing projects for his Zaffaroni Foundation, which, among other things, studies the genetic aspects of addictions and new ways to cure them. -- Reporters: Suzie Amer, Alex Frankel, Toni Logan, Sally McGrane, Carol Pickering, Chiori Santiago, and Evantheia Schibsted.
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