A DISRUPTIVE PERSONALITY, DISRUPTED

摘要

In need of an escape from the mental gymnastics of hardcore genome analysis, Eric Schadt, executive scientific director of research genetics for Rosetta Inpharmatics, is clear about what works for him - careering down a steep mountainside on a snowboard. "You can't sort of ease your way down a hill," he says over breakfast near the company's headquarters in Seattle, Washington. "It's either all, or nothing." That fearless approach may be tested after a bombshell announcement last month. Rosetta, which has been on a head-turning run for most of the past decade, now finds itself in mid-air, hoping to make a landing that could be very tricky indeed. Merck & Co., which bought the biotech company in 2001 and operated it as a subsidiary, announced on 22 October that it will close down most of the Seattle operations by December 2009, transferring Schadt and a number of his team to its Boston research centre.