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【社会人文】仿制药先驱——哈罗德 施奈德去世
By JEREMY PEARCE
Harold Snyder, who started Biocraft Laboratories in Elmwood Park, N.J., an early and highly successful manufacturer of generic equivalents for brand-name pharmaceuticals, died on Dec. 18 in Manhattan. He was 86 and had homes in Manhattan and Westhampton, N.Y.
The cause was respiratory failure, his family said.
Mr. Snyder founded Biocraft with his wife, Beatrice, in 1964, and began making antibiotic tablets, liquids and capsules, including penicillin and tetracycline. The Snyders waited for patents on existing drugs to expire and then brought their equivalent products to market. The company also manufactured antidepressants and heart and hypertensive medications, mostly in an oral form.
In the 1980s, Biocraft opened a facility in Missouri for producing the active ingredients used in different medications. These ingredients were shipped to the company’s labs in New Jersey and combined with other active ingredients, fillers and coatings in what was then “an unusual vertical integration” of materials synthesis and manufacturing in one company, said Marvin S. Samson, chief executive officer of Samson Medical Technologies, a maker of injectable generic drugs in Cherry Hill, N.J.
Mr. Samson said that the Snyders were effective advocates for generic pharmaceuticals with the federal Food and Drug Administration, and that Mr. Snyder had helped establish widely held industry standards and contributed to the approval process “for the acceptance and marketing of generics, which are actually interchangeable drugs and at a better price.”
Mr. Snyder’s entrepreneurial spirit extended to his own disasters. In the 1970s, an underground pipe at one of Biocraft’s New Jersey facilities burst, spilling roughly 33,000 gallons of chemicals and contaminating the site’s soil and groundwater. The accident required a long cleanup that included removal of tainted soil to distant landfills for hazardous waste. Along with several employees, Mr. Snyder experimented with pumping nitrogen, magnesium and other nutrients into the ground, to encourage bacteria in the soil to consume some of the pollutants and avoid having to cart away the soil. The main bacterial byproducts were carbon dioxide and clean water.
In 1983, Mr. Snyder patented the process, although he chose not to develop it commercially or enforce the patent. Similar systems, some using green plants and microorganisms, are known collectively as bioremediation and are now in wide use.
Biocraft was acquired by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, an Israeli manufacturer of generics, in 1996, in an exchange of stock that made Mr. Snyder one Teva’s directors. He founded HBJ Investments, a private equity and venture capital firm for medical technology and pharmaceuticals, in 1997.
Harold Snyder was born in Manhattan. He graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn before attending New York University. In 1950, he earned a master’s degree in natural science from Columbia.
Mr. Snyder’s wife of 50 years and business partner, Beatrice, died in 1998. His survivors include his wife, the former Tamar Hirschl; three children, Jay, Brian and Beryl Trost, all of Manhattan; and six grandchildren.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/health/research/14snyder.html?ref=research# 向前辈致敬！！！ 本人已认领该文编译，48小时后若未提交译文，请其他战友自由认领。 [标签:content1][标签:content2]
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作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2011-02-18 12:57
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