Cetus was founded in 1971 by Ronald E. Cape, Peter Farley, and
Nobelist Donald A. Glaser. Its early efforts involved automated methods to select for industrial microorganisms that could produce greater amounts of chemical feedstocks, antibiotics, or vaccine components. By the late 1970s, however, three new revolutionary techniques had been developed:
recombinant DNA,
monoclonal antibodies, and
gene expression, the foundations of the biotechnology industry. In order to enter these new fields, Cetus raised $108 million in an
initial public offering (IPO) in 1981, the largest IPO to that date. Its first large development project, in conjunction with Triton Biosciences, was the successful
cloning, expression, modification, and production of
beta-interferon. Unfortunately, the resultant protein did not live up to its expectations as a broad-spectrum anti-
cancer drug, and only much later was it approved for use to treat symptoms of
multiple sclerosis. The product is now sold under the name
Betaseron. The company's flagship product was
Interleukin-2 (IL-2), an important
modifier of the
immune system. In the early 1980s, an intense competition to clone the gene for IL-2 was underway among Cetus,
Genentech,
Immunex, and the Japanese researcher,
Tadatsugu Taniguchi, and in 1982 Taniguchi was the first to succeed. By 1983 Cetus created a proprietary recombinant version of IL2 and collaborated with
Steven Rosenberg to begin
clinical trials. It wasn't until two years later, after Cetus had been sold, that IL-2 was approved. It is now distributed under the name
Proleukin. The company also had a broad effort to research and develop techniques for DNA diagnostics. Collaborations were made with
Perkin-Elmer for diagnostic instruments, and with
Kodak for commercial diagnostic kits. It was here that the technique of
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) DNA amplification was conceived by
Kary Mullis. The technique has been widely used in
DNA research,
forensics, and
genetic disease diagnostics. Its inventor received the
Nobel Prize in 1993, the only one awarded for research performed at a biotechnology company. The delay in FDA approval for IL-2 created a major funding crisis at Cetus, which had been spending a considerable fraction of its investments to produce and test the drug. The company's
CEO resigned six weeks later, and patent rights to the PCR process were sold to
Hoffman-La Roche. Losses continued, and in 1991 the company was sold to
Chiron Corporation. Chiron continued the development of IL-2, which was finally approved by the FDA in 1992. Chiron also collected the scattered rights for the production of beta-interferon, which was approved for clinical use in 1993. ==References==