Washington BioHistory...The Hood Effect
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Leroy Hood, President & Co-Founder, Institute for Systems Biology;
Former Gates Professor and Chairman, Molecular Biotechnology; Professor, Immunology and
Bioengineering; M.D., Johns Hopkins 1964; Ph.D., Biochemistry, California
Institute of Technology, 1968. (Photo: Leroy Hood, courtesy Institute for Systems Biology)
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The economic and scientific benefits that come from presence of leading research scientists
in an area can not be overstated. Washington State, in particular, is fortunate to have a
number of such individuals conducting research at its universities, non-profit research
organizations and in private companies.
The recruitment of Leroy Hood from Caltech to
the University of Washington (UW) has had, and will continue to have an enormous impact on
the development of the life science industry in the state of Washington, and
elsewhere. In October 1991, Dr. Hood, best known for his work developing automatic
gene sequencing machines, was appointed Chair of the newly created UW's Department of Molecular
Biotechnology. The new Department was created with a focus on studying complex biological
systems and networks.
Notably, the recruitment of Hood would not have been possible were it not for a $12
million gift to the UW from Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates used to create
the new department within the UW's medical school.
Dr. Hood's presence in the Seattle area has not only recruited a number of leading
scientific researchers to the UW, such as Maynerd Olson, Mary-Claire King, Ruedi Aebersold
and others, but he has been involved in the founding of several Seattle area life science
companies.
- Darwin Molecular Corporation, established in 1992, and acquired by Chiroscience R&D/Celltech in
1996 for $120 million in stock, was focused on the discovery and development of small molecule drugs and
related diagnostics with a therapeutic focus on immune and inflammatory disease. In addition to
Allen and Gates, other prominent individuals involved in company's founding included Ronald Cape,
founder of Cetus Corporation, David Galas, former head of the
Human Genome Project, and the late George Rathmann, former Chairman of ICOS Corporation and Chairman Emeritus
of Amgen, Inc.
Rosetta Inpharmatics was established in 1996 as a bioinformatics
company working to transform the drug discovery process through its integrated
system of informatics tools, biological platforms, and data sets derived from microarray
technologies. Co-founders of Rosetta include Lee Hood, Leland
Hartwell, President and Director, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center,
and Steven Friend, former Director of Molecular Pharmacology, at the
Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The company was acquired by Merck by Merck in 2001
for $620 million, and was closed by Merck in 2008.
Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) -- The
ISB founded in 2000 by Alan Aderem, Ruedi Aebersold, and Leroy Hood,
is an internationally renowned non-profit research institute dedicated to the study
and application of systems biology. ISB's goal is to unravel the mysteries of human biology
to identify strategies for predicting and preventing diseases such as cancer, arthritis
and AIDS.- PhenoGenomics Corp., founded by Hood is
collaborating with Taiwan Genome Sciences on research concerning the genes responsible
for liver and gastric cancers. Hood is also the chief scientific officer of Taiwan Genome.
In addition to the economic/industry impact,
Dr. Hood has help develop a number of innovative Outreach Education programs that bring
leading-edge science to teachers and students in K-12 schools in the state.
These programs provide interdisciplinary, hands-on science curricula, teacher training,
equipment and support to promote systemic change in schools.
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