Alumni Spotlight- Larry Green

After graduation with my Ph.D. from UW-Madison, I started a post-doc with Dr. Margaret (“Minx”) Fuller at University of Colorado at Boulder. I was studying the genetics behind microtuble function in Drosophila spermatogenesis. The Fuller lab relocated to the newly formed Department of Developmental Biology at Stanford University, triggering my move from Boulder, CO to Palo Alto, CA and the SF Bay Area. At this point, I was becoming disenchanted with the prospects for life in academia and the prospects for a life in the biotech industry in the SF Bay Area beckoned. At this point, I had a strong background in genetics and molecular biology, including using yeast artificial chromosomes from my postdoc work, and experience with mammalian tissue culture from my early years in graduate school at Madison. This was a unique skill set. I was hired by a company doing then bleeding-edge genetic engineering work to build a transgenic mouse that made antibodies of fully human sequence and no mouse antibodies. This transgenic mouse would be a platform for the generation and discovery of human antibody drugs. That was 34 years ago. The project was a success. The work that I did on that project contributed to the creation of at least nine antibody drugs on the market today. My industry career has continued on that path, wherein I have created and invented (there’s a difference) improved and more advanced transgenic mouse platforms for antibody drug discovery, as well as gained experience in the entire process of biologic drug discovery and development, plus the business side of founding and running a company.

My graduate work was in the lab of William F. Dove in the old McArdle. Bill was a rigorous and critical scientist but also a very good person with a big heart, as was his wife who worked in his lab, Alex Shedlovsky Dove. Bill’s lab was full of very smart post-docs and grad students, with great camaraderie. But this wasn’t limited to the Dove lab. From my vantage point, this was the atmosphere across all of McArdle. The members of my thesis committee were all brilliant: Bill Dove, Michael Hoffman, Jeff Ross, Bill Sugden, and Howard Temin. The faculty at McArdle worked together for the betterment of the institution and the students. My grad student network was collaborative and supportive. While my grad school experience was mostly confined to the McArdle environment, I had the sense that this environment was encouraged across CMB. What was a bit shocking for me upon leaving UW and the McArdle environment was that this collaborative and supportive environment in faculties was not always the norm. It was the recognition of how unique the McArdle environment of that time was that led me to leave academia for biotech.

Being CEO of a small company offers a tremendous variety of matters that may require my attention. Some probably have analogues with being a PI… scientific matters, budgeting, human resources (managing people). Differences include big and little things such as the business development activities, legal contracts, intellectual property, alliance management.