“Twenty-two years ago Francis Collins, who would go on to head the Human Genome Project and run the National Institutes of Health, was part of a team that found the gene that, when mutated, caused cystic fibrosis, a deadly childhood disease in which the lungs fill with mucus and the pancreas does not make digestive enzymes.
Almost instantly, there was talk about a cure, about using gene therapy to fix the errant bits of DNA code and make children whole. But progress was slow. Most CF drugs owed as much to a business advance – the realization by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation that it could get drug companies interested if it would only do the scutwork of inventing medicines – as from advances in biology.”
Article
Matthew Herper, Forbes, 23 February 2011
