An immunologist who has turned entrepreneur builds a one-man publishing business around a 30,000-item directory
It is one of those small yet irksome inconveniences that dog immunologists and those working with biological reagents. No matter how generous one's funding or how proficient one's technicians, there are certain nettlesome tasks that threaten to halt one's research. What to do, for example, when an experiment requires a highly specific monoclonal antibody? If it can't be found in a catalog or in a colleague's laboratory, the scientist might be faced with either dropping the project or devoting months to making the antibody.

Enter William Dean Linscott, formerly an immunologist at the medical school of the University of California, San Francisco. In 1980 he dropped out of the laboratory to become sole proprietor of Linscott's Directory of Immunological and Biological Reagents. It's a guide to 30,000 different products, ranging from monoclonal antibodies and hybridomas...

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