New Start-Up Company Launched By Dr Zaffaroni

Alejandro Zaffaroni, the US scientist and entrepreneur who has beenbehind the formation of companies such as Affymax, Affymetrix and Alza, has formed a new start-up biotechnology company, Maxygen, to develop and commercialize molecular evolution technologies.

UK multinational drug company Glaxo Wellcome has taken a "major" equity stake in Maxygen, which will be headed by Dr Zaffaroni as chief executive and chairman. A co-founder of the firm, William Stemmer, is named vice president of research, and two additional founders, Russell Howard and Isaac Stein, are appointed president and chief operating officer, and a member of the board of directors, respectively.

Dr Stemmer said that the firm's technology creates genetic diversity by fragmenting pools of diverse genes and reassembling them in a non-biased manner. He added that it "provides a significant advantage over other methods, such as site-specific mutagenesis, in that it can generate novel properties within genes or pathways without requiring a detailed understanding of the mechanism, sequence or function of the particular genes. Like natural evolution, our approach efficiently provides solutions to complex biological problems."