This exhibition is an exploration of the history of biotechnology on Long Island, focusing on the 1980s and 1990s when the industry was taking shape.
What is biotechnology? As one of our interviewees for this project points out, the term is pretty broad. It can be used in a general way to include everything from using fermentation to make food or medicines to genetic engineering and beyond. More often, though, the term ‘biotechnology’ is used in a narrower sense to refer to the commercial use of modern gene editing technologies, the first of which were developed in the 1970s. This is how we use it in this exhibition.
The development of recombinant DNA in the 1970s ushered in a revolution in the life sciences. New techniques allowed researchers to combine DNA from different sources into a new and functional DNA molecule. For example, a gene that codes for a specific biological product can be inserted into a ring of DNA called a plasmid inside a bacterium. When the bacterium multiplies, so does the plasmid and with it the new DNA. And these bacteria can be induced to express the gene that has been inserted into their DNA, producing the gene’s product in large quantities. One of the first big success stories in biotech was California startup Genentech’s production of human insulin using a process based on this concept. Their procedure was more complex, and involved building a synthetic human insulin gene for insertion into the bacteria, synthesizing the human insulin molecule in pieces and then combining the pieces, but it was based technically and conceptually on this method.
The advances in molecular biology in the 1970s and subsequent decades allowed researchers to isolate, cut and paste, clone and express genes. Parallel advances in sequencing technology and the study of proteins meant that more and more information was available about the functions of specific genes in specific organisms and their location on the genome. A whole new world had opened up.
As the example of insulin suggests, the medical and commercial applications were enormously exciting. But how would all of this change science, and scientists? Almost ten years passed between the development of recombinant DNA by Herbert Boyer, Stanley Cohen and their colleagues in the early 1970s, the filing of the patent application in 1974, and the granting of the patent for the technique to the universities they worked at, Stanford and the University of California San Francisco, in 1980. Word of the application got around very quickly, setting off a long, complex and heated debate about whether research methods could and/or should be patented, what the best way was to ensure that promising discoveries with potential commercial applications were appropriately developed, and whether scientists should engage in commercial activity at all.
The questions about whether recombinant DNA methods could be patented and how to handle the patent process for federally funded scientific research were largely resolved by the early 1980s. But the questions about what the new and more extensive contact with industry would do to the life sciences were not. Even into the 1990s, many research scientists were skeptical about collaboration with industry. Their skepticism played out on a national level, with debates over policy, safety, and funding. It also drove local conflicts within research institutions, including institutions on Long Island. There was research to be done, money to do it and potentially big profits and important inventions on the horizon – but was it the right path to take?
This exhibition about biotechnology on Long Island tells a series of stories about scientists, entrepreneurs, patent attorneys and administrators as they grappled with these questions during the early years of biotech. We focus on the 1980s and the 1990s because the newness of the industry made for a wild ride for those involved and because collaborations between scientists and industry have become so normal that it’s easy to forget how different things were thirty or forty years ago.
We also want to highlight the aspects of these stories that are unique to the region — what makes Long Island a good place for biotechnology? What are some of the challenges?
A completely comprehensive history of every biotech company, every scientist, every venture capitalist and every mediator and facilitator would be impossible. Instead, we have chosen a group of people whose stories highlight important aspects of the industry’s development. For every person we have interviewed there are probably five or six more that we could have spoken to. Although our interviewees are all well known within their fields — and many of them know one another — our goal was not simply a collection of big names or a ‘who’s who’ of Long Island biotech. Rather, we wanted a thematically interesting group of stories that sets up questions, points out potential problems, and suggests further areas of inquiry.
We hope you enjoy exploring our exhibition!