Relying on advice from a how-to book, two UC San Diego scientists started a company in the late 1970s called Hybritech Inc. -- and ignited a local biotech boom.
Although their company no longer exists, it transformed the commerce of the San Diego region, which now ranks as the nation's third-largest biotech center, behind San Francisco and Boston.
Today, nearly 60 companies can trace their roots to Hybritech, known in the biomedical field for its test to detect prostate cancer.
At Hybritech's founding on Sept. 14, 1978 -- 25 years ago this month -- the city long known for surf and Shamu lacked the key ingredients needed to build companies: venture financiers, seasoned drug company executives, commercial lab space.
"We were young and didn't realize there was no way to accomplish what we did," former Hybritech Chief Executive Ted Greene said.
When Eli Lilly & Co. acquired Hybritech in 1986, the deal made two dozen ground-floor employees instant millionaires. But more important, it spawned a generation of new companies. Operating from science parks hugging Torrey Pines Road, near the world-renowned Scripps Research Institute, Hybritech's progeny are working on drugs for cancer, diabetes and other diseases.
The Hybritech alums also invested their riches in new biotech companies that sprouted in Carlsbad and Sorrento Valley.
Hybritech co-founder Howard Birndorf rolled his fortune into six successive companies, including Idec Pharmaceuticals Corp. in San Diego, one of the nation's largest biotech firms, with a total stock market value of $5.3 billion.
In all, San Diego boasts 290 biotechnology companies, adding breadth to a regional economy that had been reliant on tourism and aerospace, a shrinking industry. In 1997, employment in the biotech sector surpassed that in the aerospace business for the first time.
"Hybritech started it all," said Andrea Moser, vice president of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp.
At 25, San Diego's biotech industry still has some growing up to do. Because it takes years to design and test a drug, few of San Diego's current biotech firms have products approved for sale -- though as many as 75 biotech drugs from local firms are in human tests and could reach the market in the next three years, analysts say. What's more, to grab manufacturing jobs for San Diego, the biotech industry must develop beyond its roots as an R&D hotbed.
