Doctoral Dissertation Research: Impact of the Human Genome Project on Scientific Discovery and Industry Evolution

2000年3月，人类基因组计划（HGP）——世界上最大的、公共资助的、协作的生物学项目——测序并发布了第一张人类基因组图谱。人类生物学的这一重要发展旨在彻底改变我们对基本生物机制的理解，改变新药的发现方式，改善医疗保健。人类基因组是30亿个DNA碱基对的数字图谱，揭示了基因的位置和身份，这些基因编码细胞中的各种蛋白质，并允许在寻找疾病靶点时具有高水平的特异性。这种科学方法与现有的发现范式截然不同。免费基因组图谱的吸引力及其预测搜索功能降低了进入门槛，导致新公司成立和创业精神急剧增加。这张地图实际上改变了制药公司寻找药物的方式，改变了制药行业的竞争本质。人类基因组计划所带来的发现性质的变化为研究不同信息和技术背景下的技术搜索过程提供了独特的机会，并可为政府资助项目在提供经济和公共卫生利益方面的作用提供信息。本研究详细分析了现有公司、新进入者和大学及其研发项目，以阐明人类基因组图谱如何影响新药和疾病的探索，以及生物制药行业的发展轨迹。该项目构建了一个原创的、独特的小分子药物专利数据库，追踪HGP前后研发项目的搜索和演化轨迹。该项目将文本挖掘和化学/生物信息学的强大计算技术与基因组学和临床试验数据库相结合，为技术变革背景下的企业搜索行为提供丰富、多层次的分析。该项目展示了预测性、大规模搜索功能的可用性如何改变了公司？S创新行为。

In March 2000, the Human Genome Project (HGP), the world's largest, publicly funded, collaborative biology project sequenced and released the first map of the human genome. This important development in human biology was aimed at revolutionizing our understanding of basic biological mechanisms, change how new drugs were discovered and improve medical care. The human genome is a digital map of 3 billion DNA base pairs revealing the location and identity of genes, which encode various proteins in cells and allow for a high level of specificity in the search for disease targets. The scientific approach was radically different from existing discovery paradigms. The attractiveness of a free genome map along with its predictive search capabilities lowered barriers to entry, leading to a sharp increase in new firm formation and entrepreneurship. The map, in effect, changed how firms searched for drugs and altered the competitive nature of the industry. Changes in the nature of discovery due to the Human Genome Project provide a unique opportunity to study the process of technological search under different informational and technological contexts and can inform the role of government-funded projects in providing economic and public health benefit. This study analyzes incumbent firms, new entrants and universities, and their R&D projects in granular detail to shed light on how the human genome map impacted the exploration of new drugs and diseases, and trajectory of the biopharmaceutical industry. The project constructs an original and unique database of small molecule drug patents to trace the trajectories of search and evolution of R&D projects before and after the HGP. The project links powerful computational techniques from text-mining and chemical/bio informatics with genomics and clinical trial databases to provide a rich, multi-level analysis of firm search behavior in the context of technological change. The project demonstrates how the availability of predictive, large-scale search capabilities changed firm?s innovative behavior.