Chiron Corporation was an American multinational biotechnology firm founded in 1981, based in Emeryville, California, that was acquired by Novartis on April 20, 2006. It had offices and facilities in eighteen countries on five continents. Chiron's business and research was in three main areas: biopharmaceuticals, vaccines, and blood testing. Chiron's vaccines and blood testing units were combined to form Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, while Chiron BioPharmaceuticals was integrated into Novartis Pharmaceuticals. In 2014, Novartis completed the sale of its blood transfusion diagnostics unit to Grifols and announced agreements for the sale of its vaccines unit to GlaxoSmithKline.
Recombinant DNA (rDNA) molecules are DNA molecules formed by laboratory methods of genetic recombination that bring together genetic material from multiple sources, creating sequences that would not otherwise be found in the genome.
Ventria Bioscience is a biotech company with a focus on human nutrition and human therapeutics. The company was established in 1993 in Colorado. The company's core technology is a genetically modified crop-based protein production system called ExpressTec. They have also made applications to grow rice with human genes.
Pharming, a portmanteau of farming and pharmaceutical, refers to the use of genetic engineering to insert genes that code for useful pharmaceuticals into host animals or plants that would otherwise not express those genes, thus creating a genetically modified organism (GMO). Pharming is also known as molecular farming, molecular pharming, or biopharming.
In September 2021, Synthetic Genomics Inc. (SGI), a private company located in La Jolla, California, changed its name to Viridos. The company is focused on the field of synthetic biology, especially harnessing photosynthesis with micro algae to create alternatives to fossil fuels. Viridos designs and builds biological systems to address global sustainability problems.
A biopharmaceutical, also known as a biological medical product, or biologic, is any pharmaceutical drug product manufactured in, extracted from, or semisynthesized from biological sources. Different from totally synthesized pharmaceuticals, they include vaccines, whole blood, blood components, allergenics, somatic cells, gene therapies, tissues, recombinant therapeutic protein, and living medicines used in cell therapy. Biologics can be composed of sugars, proteins, nucleic acids, or complex combinations of these substances, or may be living cells or tissues. They are isolated from living sources—human, animal, plant, fungal, or microbial. They can be used in both human and animal medicine.
Cetus Corporation was one of the first biotechnology companies. It was established in Berkeley, California, in 1971, but conducted most of its operations in nearby Emeryville. Before merging with Chiron Corporation in 1991, it developed several significant pharmaceutical drugs as well as a revolutionary DNA amplification technique.
Hepatitis B vaccine is a vaccine that prevents hepatitis B. The first dose is recommended within 24 hours of birth with either two or three more doses given after that. This includes those with poor immune function such as from HIV/AIDS and those born premature. It is also recommended that health-care workers be vaccinated. In healthy people, routine immunization results in more than 95% of people being protected.
William J. Rutter is an American biochemist who cofounded the early biotechnology company Chiron Corporation together with Edward Penhoet and Pablo DT Valenzuela. As chairman of the department of biochemistry and biophysics of the University of California, San Francisco, Rutter helped establish that department as a leader in the academic side of the biotechnology during the San Francisco Bay Area biotech boom of the 1980s.
A subunit vaccine is a vaccine that contains purified parts of the pathogen that are antigenic, or necessary to elicit a protective immune response. Subunit vaccine can be made from dissembled viral particles in cell culture or recombinant DNA expression, in which case it is a recombinant subunit vaccine.
Mario Rosemblatt is a Chilean immunologist. His research established that dendritic cells are responsible for imprinting the tissue-specific homing of T lymphocytes. He is currently Executive Director of Fundacion Ciencia para la Vida (FCV), a non profit institution that carries out scientific and technological research. He is Immunology Professor at the University of Chile and Universidad San Sebastián (2008), He received The Academic Excellence Award - Faculty of Sciences - University of Chle (2008) and the Basic Science Mentee/Mentor Award from The Transplantation Society, USA, among other Awards.
José Pablo Arellano Marin is an economist, academic, researcher, company director, consultant and Chilean politician, current member of Amarillos por Chile. He was Minister of Education under the governments of Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle and of Michelle Bachelet, chief executive officer of Codelco-Chile, a state-owned company and also the largest company in the country. His father was José Arellano, a Falangist former mayor of Cartagena and former president of the Association of Municipalities of the time. He died when Arellano was just four years old. He has been married since 1975 to the preschool teacher and landscape designer María Elena (Manena) Recabarren, and they have four children, José Pablo, Magdalena, Andrés and Francisca.
GC Biopharma [Green Cross Corporation] is a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Yongin, South Korea.
Sir Michael Houghton is a British scientist and Nobel Prize laureate. Along with Qui-Lim Choo, George Kuo and Daniel W. Bradley, he co-discovered Hepatitis C in 1989. He also co-discovered the Hepatitis D genome in 1986. The discovery of the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) led to the rapid development of diagnostic reagents to detect HCV in blood supplies, which has reduced the risk of acquiring HCV through blood transfusion from one in three to about one in two million. It is estimated that antibody testing has prevented at least 40,000 new infections per year in the US alone and many more worldwide.
Professor Juan A. Asenjo is a Chilean chemical engineer who specialises in biotechnology. He currently serves as the director of the Centre for Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Chile and is the President of the Chilean Academy of Science.
Science and Technology in Chile is led by the National Commission of Scientific and Technological Investigation.
Robert Harry Purcell is an American virologist and former co-chief of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. He is known for his work on hepatitis viruses, and was involved in identifying hepatitis A virus, hepatitis D virus, and hepatitis E virus, developing an animal model for hepatitis B, and developing the hepatitis A vaccine.
Helios Murialdo is a Chilean-Canadian molecular biologist, fiction writer, and ecologist. His research in the field of the assembly and structure of bacterial viruses contributed to the development of the first system for the cloning of human genes. He has published six novels and is a member of a group of conservationists that established a Natural Reserve in the central part of the Chilean Biodiversity Hotspot. Son of an Italian immigrant father and a Chilean mother of French descent, he has a brother and a sister. He is a member of the board of directors of the non-profit Fundación Ciencia & Vida, a scientific and technological institution with headquarters in Santiago, Chile. He is president of the NGO Corporación Altos de Cantillana, which manages the 26,000 acres of the Altos de Cantillana Natural Reserve in the coastal mountains of central Chile. He makes his home in this Natural Reserve, and spends the rest of the year in Toronto, Canada.
Vanessa Olimpia Kaiser Barents-Von Hohenhagen is a Chilean columnist and politician who served as a councilwoman of Las Condes.
Navin Khanna is an Indian researcher and scientist known for his work on diagnostic kits for viral infections, including dengue, HIV, hepatitis C (HCV), and hepatitis B (HBV). In 2020, he was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honor, for his contributions to science and engineering.
