Donald Glaser co-founded Cetus, where PCR was invented

Person: Donald Glaser
Lived: 1926–2013
Field: Physics, biotechnology
From: American

The story

Donald Glaser, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants in Cleveland, won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics for the bubble chamber. Two years later he left physics for molecular biology, a field that had fascinated him since he attended Max Delbrück’s seminars as a graduate student at Caltech. At Berkeley’s Virus Laboratory he studied how bacteria control the copying of their DNA and showed that certain mutations made hamster cells abnormally sensitive to ultraviolet light, involving the same genes behind xeroderma pigmentosum, a human condition in which sunlight causes skin cancer.

Around 1970 Glaser saw that molecular biology was producing remarkably detailed knowledge that was hardly being applied to medicine or agriculture. In 1971 he joined Ronald Cape, Peter Farley and the investor Moshe Alafi to found Cetus Corporation in Berkeley, the first company created to turn the new biology into products. Glaser chaired its scientific advisory board, bringing his talent for automation to the task of handling large numbers of cells and microbes.

Cetus became one of the most important companies in the history of biotechnology. It developed interleukin-2, approved in 1992 as the cancer drug Proleukin, and worked with Triton Biosciences on beta interferon, later approved for multiple sclerosis. Most important of all, it was at Cetus in 1983 that the chemist Kary Mullis invented the polymerase chain reaction, PCR, a way of copying a chosen stretch of DNA millions of times in a few hours.

PCR transformed biology and medicine. It is used for the early diagnosis of diseases such as leukaemia and lymphoma, for matching tissue for transplants, for identifying suspects from tiny traces of DNA at crime scenes, for paternity testing, and, in the form of RT-PCR, it became the main test for the virus that causes COVID-19. Cetus was sold to Chiron Corporation in 1991, and its PCR patent rights went to Hoffmann-La Roche. Glaser himself moved on again, to the study of human vision, but the company he helped start had already helped create an industry.

Why it matters

The company Glaser co-founded helped launch the biotechnology industry and gave the world PCR, now used daily in diagnosis, forensics and research.

About Donald Glaser

Physicist who invented the bubble chamber, which revealed a zoo of new particles, then turned to biology and co-founded Cetus, the first biotechnology company, where PCR was born.

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Donald Glaser

1926–2013 · Physics, biotechnology

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