IMPACTS OF BIOENGINEERING ON BIOTECHNOLOGY


 This survival-driven liaison between life scientist and engineer has, over
the past few years, been a fascinating development in which I, for one,
have had the good fortune to participate. What commenced as a furtive
association between a proud, confident, and xenophobic pure science dis-
cipline skeptical about what engineers had to contribute to their labors,
and an engineering discipline mystified by the arcane concepts and prac-
tices of the biological scientists, and unsure of its ability to solve their
problems, has now begun to evolve into a mutually supportive, mutually
respectful, and increasingly productive union. Fortunately, many of the
established tools and techniques of chemical and biochemical engineering
that have been successfully employed in the design of manufacturing proc-
esses for traditional pharmaceutical chemicals and fermentation products
are proving to be adaptable to the manufacture of the newer bioproducts.
This is evidenced, for example, by the successful commercialization of
human insulin generated by recombinant microorganisms (an Eli Lilly/
Genentech collaboration), the imminent commercial introduction of ge-
netically-engineered bovine growth hormone (by Monsanto), and the re-
cent registration of recombinant human growth hormone by Genentech.
 Possibly an even more important consequence of the marriage of life
science and engineering is the increasing awareness by engineers that
many of the sophisticated life-science laboratory practices employed to
grow and manipulate living cells, and to assay and isolate biological sub-
stances, contain the seeds of novel and useful means for large-scale produc-
tion and purification of these products. Conversely, microbiologists, cell
physiologists, molecular biologists, and biochemists are beginning to rec-
ognize that, by exposing their bioengineering colleagues early on to the
special properties and characteristics of the cells they are attempting to
manipulate, and of the bioproducts they hope to produce, they can obtain
advice, guidance, and innovative suggestions about their procedures
which not only are improving their chances of success in the laboratory,
but are greatly expediting and simplifying their ultimate adaptation to
large-scale production.
 As might be expected, this vital cross-disciplinary collaboration between
life scientist and engineer, on which the success and survival of the emerg-
ing biotechnology industry will depend, is today largely limited to that
small number of corporations which have a vested commercial interest in
bioproducts with relatively near-term market potential. These, in the
main, are human and animal health-care products for diagnostic, prophy-
lactic, and therapeutic applications. The U.S. companies involved are the
larger drug and chemical companies (e.g., Merck, Lilly, Monsanto, Du-
Pont), and the well-established genetic engineering firms (e.g., Genen-