Пища для ума - Food for thought. Коломейцева Е.М - 64 стр.

UptoLike

ВУЗ: 

ТГТУ | Тамбов

Составители: 

Рубрика: 

says. A common criticism is that European technology start-ups fail to think big in contrast with the outsized egos in Silicon Valley.
Georges Haour of IMD, a Swiss business-school, calls this Europe's "Peter Pan complex" – promising firms do not become world-
beaters because they do not grow up.
Ms Drakeman encountered European parochialism when raising investment capital for the company abroad (today some 40 % of
her shareholders are American institutional investors). Some of her Danish investors were very upset when she brought these other
investors on board. "‘Why do you need so much money now,' they asked, insisting that they would have been ready to provide us with
more money eventually, when they decided that we needed it," she says. She decries this lack of ambition and argues that her firm's
brimming portfolio of drugs, never mind its stunningly lucrative deal with GSK, would not have been possible if she had stayed put in
Copenhagen.
Indeed, she confides that much of the GSK deal was actually done not in Britain or Denmark, but in Philadelphia (home of Jean-
Pierre Garnier, boss of GSK until last month) and Princeton, where Ms Drakeman is now based. Having lived in Denmark for several
years, while her husband continued to live in America, Ms Drakeman moved back to Princeton in order to see more of her family, to
be closer to American investors and to escape Denmark's punitive tax regime. She points out that America's research clusters in
California and Cambridge, Massachusetts are attracting talent from many European firms, challenging the notion that European
biotech is somehow about to break free of the constraints that have long held it back.
Keeping the faith
That points to some snags in the Genmab story. Its R&D is still anchored in the Netherlands, where its star researcher is based.
What if he leaves, or refuses to move to a new American research headquarters? More troublingly, what if one of Genmab's potential
blockbusters fails late in the game – as did Pfizer's torcetrapib, a cholesterol drug that cost the firm $1 billion? A drugs giant is big
enough to survive such a huge blow, as Pfizer has shown, but such a fiasco would surely wipe out a start-up like Genmab. Yet Ms
Drakeman insists that investing in biotech is not as random as all that. A good boss can guide a firm, she reckons, by identifying what
the market needs, securing the edge in intellectual property and maintaining the confidence of investors – especially if there are not
yet any revenues.
It seems that Ms Drakeman's doctorate came in handy after all: having studied the history of religion, she knows all about how to
persuade people of the need to have faith.
T a s k O n e. Make up questions covering the subject matter of the article.
T a s k T w o. Write a review on the article.
A R T I C L E 9.
Read the article and choose the best beginning from the given below to fill each of the gaps:
A. Gene therapy;
B. Despite the slow progress;
C. Another promising strategy;
D. Hence, research is focused;
E. FOR around 40 years scientists;
F. There has been great progress;
G. Could that be about to change?
H. Katherine High, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute;
I. More importantly, though;
J. Work on gene therapy;
K. In the early days, says Dr Seymour;
L. The most notable successes;
M. Many of gene therapy's other;
N. Viruses can also;
O. Most work in gene therapy.
Seeing is believing
May 1
st
2008
From
The Economist
print edition
The prospects for using genes as a therapy may be improving
1. _____ have understood how genes work. They have known the structure of genes, how they replicate, how they are
controlled and expressed and, crucially, how to manipulate them. Such knowledge has been the basis of a genetic revolution that
offers the power to rewrite the material from which all living organisms are made.
2. _____ in realising some of this promise, in the form of genetically modified organisms. But ways to correct the genetic
mistakes that cause many human diseases have been slower to arrive. Gene therapy has been plagued with problems – naivety, false
promises, over-optimism and fatalities. Although thousands of patients have received gene therapy for a variety of conditions, only a
few have shown any clinical benefit.

Страницы