[This post was co-authored by Sean Harper, Amgen’s executive vice president of R&D.] People in the tech industry often like to say that we overestimate the short-term impact of new technology and underestimate the longer-term value. The human genome project is a superb example of this truism. Overpromise was indeed rampant during the interval around … Continue reading “The Human Genome Project Wasn’t Overhyped. The Payoff Just Took Time”
Author: Sasha Kamb
Alexander (Sasha) Kamb is the senior vice president for research at Amgen. Dr. Kamb received his A.B. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from Caltech. After a postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF, he worked in the biotechnology field for about ten years, specializing in the genetics of cancer, and then in the Pharmaceutical sector where he led the Novartis Oncology Research Group. In 2006, Dr. Kamb joined Amgen to direct Oncology Research at their South San Francisco site. In 2007 he took over the leadership of the Neurosciences Therapeutic Area. In February 2010 he was promoted to Vice President, Research, Neuroscience, and was given the remit to build a specialized department within Amgen Research (Genome Analysis Unit) focused on cross-disease-area applications of next-generation sequencing. At the end of 2011, Dr. Kamb was promoted to Senior Vice President to head all of Amgen’s discovery research.