The New England Enzyme Center (NEEC) was created at the

Tufts University School of Medicine The Tufts University School of Medicine is the medical school of Tufts University, a Private university, private research university in Massachusetts. It was established in 1893 and is located on the university's health sciences campus in down ...

Boston, Massachusetts Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

in 1964 as a federally supported biochemical resource center.

History

According to Doogab Yi, by the late 1970s NEEC had been transformed into "several commercial biotech companies." Roscoe O. Brady and his colleagues at

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

(NIH) were almost ready for a clinical trial for an enzyme replacement therapy for Gaucher's disease that they had been working on for over a decade. They could not purify the enzyme in large enough quantities. Blair had started his career in the biotechnology industry working as a technician at Tufts medical school. In 1978 Henry E. Blair, from the NEEC and a team of researchers including Peter G. Pentchev, Roscoe O. Brady, Daniel E. Britton and Susan H. Sorrell from the National Institutes of Health co-authored a paper in the

PNAS ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of S ...

isolating and comparing enzymes in search of a treatment for Gaucher disease. In 1981 venture capitalist

Sheridan Snyder Sheridan Gray Snyder OBE (born October 20, 1936) is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist in the biotechnology industry. He is the founder and CEO of Biocatalyst, Genzyme and other companies. Beginnings Education Snyder gr ...

, Henry Blair and George M. Whitesides created the start-up

Genzyme Genzyme (also known as Genzyme Transgenics Corp or GTC Biotherapeutics) was an American biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From its acquisition in 2011 to 2022 Genzyme operated as a fully owned subsidiary of Sanofi. In 2010, ...

and continued to produce the enzymes for the NIH. Genzyme's first office was an old clothing warehouse adjacent to Tufts Medical School.

References

{{authority control Tufts University Biochemistry research institutes Life sciences industry Research institutes established in 1964 1964 establishments in Massachusetts