Introduction

82 BIOHYPE
of the National Academy of Sciences and a past president of the American
Society of Biochemistry, she has testified before Congress for increased
funding for NIH, which is the primary source of funds for her
lab. Her lab is located in a modern building across the street from Torrey
Pines State Park, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean. But its enviable
location isn’t apparent from the inside of her windowless, basement
office, where the concrete walls are lined with the pictures of her children,
now in their late twenties, and the scientific posters for the lectures
announcing her most significant discoveries. She wore blue jeans and a
turtle neck, with her closely cropped graying hair accented by a set of
dangling silver earrings.
After looking over the patent, she said, “All this says is these kinases
are likely to be targets for diseases.” “What diseases” I asked. “I don’t
know,” she replied. “There’s nothing specific in this other than this is a
gene family that’s likely to be important.” 41
She explained how researchers used genetic information to generate
the knowledge needed to speed the search for new drugs. Scientists can
breed mice that lack a specific gene in order to study the impact of that
absence. Or they can quickly create recombinant versions of the molecule
and feed it to experimental animals to see what an excess will cause.
Researchers who had identified the first kinases in the early 1990s had
initially thought that the convoluted folds of the long-chain proteins
would make finding drugs to inhibit them almost impossible. But, in
fact, it turned out that the folds provided numerous sites where a drug
might block a kinase’s function, and thus there might be many potential
inhibitors (presuming, of course, that scientists discover that blocking a
particular kinase’s function is a desirable thing during the course of a disease).
“People in the field are against patenting genes like this,” she continued.
“This is basic research. And if they’re saying anyone who works
on these kinases and figures out what to do with it gives them some
rights to that, [then] I don’t agree. . . . Genes are supposed to be public
information.”