In 1988, biochemist Israel Charo got swept into the vortex of the biotech world when he took a promising target for blocking platelet aggregation and helped launch the company Cor Therapeutics. In short order, he was overseeing Phase I trials of Integrilin, an intravenous therapy for patients with acute coronary syndrome. The drug, a GPIIb-IIIa antagonist, went against the odds for biotech success and made it to market in 1998. In 2002, Millennium Pharmaceuticals acquired Cor Therapeutics. Last year, sales of Integrilin hit $315 million, according to Schering-Plough, which now markets the drug in the United States.
In 1991, the year that Cor went public, Charo, a former investigator in the platelet and thrombosis group of The J. David Gladstone Institutes at the University of California, San Francisco, had a change of heart. "I was not prepared to end my career as a basic scientist," he says. "And because Cor ...
