In last year’s April issue of GT, our cover story looked at “New Homes for Genomes” — three brand-new institutes starting up at Princeton, the University of Michigan, and the University of California, Davis. The architect for Princeton’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics was Rafael Viñoly, who since then has gotten national attention as one of the architects participating in the design contest to rebuild the World Trade Center site. Viñoly’s team made it to the final round of the competition but ultimately was beaten out by Studio Daniel Libeskind.
Meanwhile, David Botstein was wooed away from Stanford to become director of the Princeton institute.
The April ’02 issue also included news of Genomic Solutions’ stealthy acquisition of ProteoMetrics. Just a few months after the magazine came out, however, Genomic Solutions itself was snapped up by Harvard Bioscience in a $26 million cash and stock transaction.
We also looked at Visible Genetics last year, and CEO Richard Daly said at the time that without FDA regulations on home-brew tests, the company could have trouble getting its HIV genotyping kit into wide distribution. That wouldn’t be first thing on Daly’s mind for long, though: by October, Visible Genetics was acquired by Bayer Diagnostics for $61.4 million.