Two of the computer industry鈥檚 most successful entrepreneurs have joined
forces with a leading biotechnology company. Bill Gates and Paul Allen,
cofounders of Microsoft, last week invested $10 million in Darwin Molecular,
a company that hopes to use a better understanding of human genetics to
design drugs.
Gates and Allen have been elected to the board of Darwin, which is based
at Kirkland in Washington, Microsoft鈥檚 home state. 鈥楤ill thinks that biotechnology
is the next best thing after computer and software technology,鈥� says Mark
Pearson, chairman of Darwin.
鈥榃e鈥檝e got Bill on the board firstly because he鈥檚 a smart guy, and because
of the finance he can bring,鈥� says Pearson. 鈥楤ut the best thing he鈥檚 bringing
to the company is experience of building a large company from some good
ideas and a few guys.鈥�
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Darwin is developing automated techniques to speed up the decoding of
the genetic information in human DNA. Leroy Hood, who heads the company鈥檚
gene sequencing work, played a leading role in automating the US government鈥檚
own gene sequencing programme. Gates is a close friend of Hood.
To apply information from the genome sequencing to the development of
drugs, Darwin is relying on a phenomenon called artificial evolution. This
involves generating millions of different substances in a test tube, and
seeing which ones are most suited to a particular task, such as binding
to diseased tissue. Genetic data would alert the researchers to receptors
involved in disease, speeding the search for drugs.
Bruce Butcher, a lawyer representing the new investors, says that Gates
sees the company as an amalgam of scientific and commercial 鈥榮uperstars鈥�.
鈥楾hat鈥檚 what intrigued him 鈥� it鈥檚 an intellectual thing,鈥� says Butcher.
