This book was a genuinely pleasant read. It came recommended to me from Amazon, so I thought I'd give it whirl. The nice thing about this book is that its really a light reading material, but it has some great information to boot. In particular, I thoroughly enjoyed the following two sections:

*Part Two: Biotech's Building Blocks, and
*Part Three: The business of Biotech: Product Development and Financing.

The intended audience is for those who are interested in learning some history about the field, who the key players are, and how to assess and what to expect from the companies within it.
In addition, it doesn't expect the reader to be knowledgeable in either biology or business necessarily; instead its really geared for a rather generic audience.

The one thing to keep in mind however, is that it was published in 2000, which was during the dotcom boom where anything "*tech" sounded like a great epiphany. And although,
the book is kinda dated in terms of molecular-biology-time, much of it is still fundamental enough that it is still relevant even today.

Overall, if you are a biology-geek wanting to read a nice little story about the nature of the business side of the field you should check it out. I read it over a weekends time and really enjoyed it a lot.

I read From Alchemy to IPO for an MBA course on entrepreneurialism in the pharmaceutical industry. Given my background (undergraduate business, financial analyst role, limited in-depth scientific knowledge), I found this book to be a very useful and balanced guide to both the business and technical aspects of biotechnology.



Robbins-Roth includes enough information on initial public offerings (IPOs) and merger activity among biotech firms to warm the hearts of the most resolute business student, but the drug discovery and development process is also covered in sufficient detail to give the lay reader an understanding for the operational challenges faced by firms in this sector.



Add to this the competent yet necessarily superficial descriptions of more esoteric terms such as monoclonal antibodies and combinatorial chemistry, and you have a solid text that covers the industry and its ongoing challenges very well.

I read From Alchemy to IPO for an MBA course on entrepreneurialism in the pharmaceutical industry. Given my background (undergraduate business, financial analyst role, limited in-depth scientific knowledge), I found this book to be a very useful and balanced guide to both the business and technical aspects of biotechnology.

Robbins-Roth includes enough information on initial public offerings (IPOs) and merger activity among biotech firms to warm the hearts of the most resolute business student, but the drug discovery and development process is also covered in sufficient detail to give the lay reader an understanding for the operational challenges faced by firms in this sector.

Add to this the competent yet necessarily superficial descriptions of more esoteric terms such as monoclonal antibodies and combinatorial chemistry, and you have a solid text that covers the industry and its ongoing challenges very well.

I read From Alchemy to IPO for an MBA course on entrepreneurialism in the pharmaceutical industry. Given my background (undergraduate business, financial analyst role, limited in-depth scientific knowledge), I found this book to be a very useful and balanced guide to both the business and technical aspects of biotechnology.

Robbins-Roth includes enough information on initial public offerings (IPOs) and merger activity among biotech firms to warm the hearts of the most resolute business student, but the drug discovery and development process is also covered in sufficient detail to give the lay reader an understanding for the operational challenges faced by firms in this sector.

Add to this the competent yet necessarily superficial descriptions of more esoteric terms such as monoclonal antibodies and combinatorial chemistry, and you have a solid text that covers the industry and its ongoing challenges very well.

This is a great overview of the world of biotech. The author explains the science with clarity and enthusiasm and the introduction this book provides to the corporate side of biotech is also very interesting and well written.

I read the first 20 pages of this book and quit. It was too painful to keep going. The author's wording in convoluted, tangential, and just plain annoying. She throws out dozens of names from the industry, so many you can't keep them straight. There is poor flow to the writing, so you cannot understand why she is telling you things from one line to the next. The topics of each paragraph jump from one subject to another with abrupt, confusing transitions. I returned the book!

I read the first 20 pages of this book and quit. It was too painful to keep going. The author's wording in convoluted, tangential, and just plain annoying. She throws out dozens of names from the industry, so many you can't keep them straight. There is poor flow to the writing, so you cannot understand why she is telling you things from one line to the next. The topics of each paragraph jump from one subject to another with abrupt, confusing transitions. I returned the book!

I'll be starting a biomedical engineering Ph.D. program in the fall and have read recently a few books on the biotech subject. This one gave the clearest picture of the biotech industries, the companies in them, how to manage and finance them, as well as how to recognize solid biotech companies for investing purposes. A quick and entertaining read for anyone interested in the business behind biotechnology.

I'll be starting a biomedical engineering Ph.D. program in the fall and have read recently a few books on the biotech subject. This one gave the clearest picture of the biotech industries, the companies in them, how to manage and finance them, as well as how to recognize solid biotech companies for investing purposes. A quick and entertaining read for anyone interested in the business behind biotechnology.

For someone interested in investing in Biotech and wanting to do homework, this a great book to start with. I have read it twice.

I have stayed away from investing in drugs and biotechs for over 5 years. That is not my area of expertise. This book is great in being a teacher of biotech history and technology. It ties in biotech implications very well with drug development, agriculture, and other roles it will have in society. If you want to learn biotech for the fun of it or because you want to start investing in biotech/genomics, this is a must read. I have to warn you though, after reading this book, I have come to the conclusion that I will be buying a biotech fund instead of buying biotech companies. The book makes things seem to complex and unpredicatbale for picking individual companies for the long term investment prospects. They are just too many and their success is largely reliant on chance and luck. Even if you are a daytrader or swingtrader, by improving your knowledge of the biotech industry, you will improve your chances of making money when you know what the press releases are talking about.

Let me finish with why I did not rate this book a 5. The wording that the author chooses is sometimes unclear and downright annoying. There were at least 5 spots where I had to stop and ask myself. Am I just stupid for not understanding what the author is trying to say, or is this written in caveman English. I came to the conclusion that the unclear sentences were the fault of the author. I have read many business/investing books where the author writes concise and flowing text. This book was annoying to read at times because of Robbins-Roth's wordings.

after reading this book, i took an online biotech seminar at fool.com that suggested all subscribers to read this book... luckily i did and found the seminar to be more interesting than i had thought.

this book essentially gets you through the basics about biotech... from how a drug is discovered, tested, approved and marketed. you will learn about the industries various facets; financial, technical, biological etc.

highly rated and a wise choice indeed!

I have to say this is required reading for anyone with an interest in biotech - be it they have a PhD and working in industry, or an MBA student with aspirations of getting into it. It's relatively up to date, contains great explanations of some very esoteric technologies, and puts it all into a business perspective.

The author's expertise in science, finance, management strategy, and journalism all pay off in this very well written book. It's both lively and fact-packed, with quite a few tables covering dozens or hundreds of IPOs in the biotech industry. It gives a spectrum of biotech probably much broader than what any one reader would be familiar with. In a few places, I would have liked a bit more detail: for example, in the IPO chapter, a paragraph about exactly what the investment bank "does", how it "does" it, what its risks are in taking on an IPO, etc.