How did former Human Genome Sciences CEO Bill Haseltine [Chairman of the Board] get involved?
Ah, that’s an interesting story. Thirty years ago, as an undergraduate at Harvard, I wrote my thesis while working at the [then] Sydney Farber Cancer Institute with Bill, who was a new assistant professor. He’d been a postdoc with [Nobel laureate] David Baltimore, working on retroviruses. Bill had two or three people in his lab; he was just getting started. He got very interested in DNA damage and repair – the Maxam-Gilbert protocol was, you take a piece of DNA and you damage it with alkylating agents. Bill always had a passion for DNA sequencing, and we got the protocol from Allan Maxam before it was published – I was probably one of the first people in the world sequencing DNA with this method. I kept up with Bill as a friend over the years; he worked on HIV and ultimately started Human Genome Sciences. Three or four years ago, Mike [Yaffe] and I visited him – he was very interested in the idea [of DNAR] and agreed to help. What’s the status of the company today? We have venture back
