What if… we had the tools to reengineer certain forms of life? How would we anticipate the ethical, economic, environmental, legal and social issues that might arise?
Integrity and a solid moral compass are essential to the work of Life Technologies, and provide the basis for our comprehensive commitment to solid governance, ethical and lawful conduct, and transparency in our role as a global citizen.
Being a responsible company means conducting business with the highest level of integrity. To truly achieve success, we must be known not just for being a great company, but also for being a good company—one that is responsible and ethical in its actions.
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In-Licensing/Patents Promoting intellectual property speeds invention. more At Life Technologies, we make the development of new Intellectual Property (IP) a central theme across our business. Each year we spend more than $300 million on research and development—more than any other life sciences tools company. This investment has resulted in a library of more than 3900 patents. We track new inventions closely; anyone can submit an invention disclosure at any time, and all submissions are reviewed. In fact, we recently implemented an online tool to enable an invention disclosure to be submitted and modified across the company in a cumulative fashion. We believe that tracking the number of invention disclosures is a reasonable proxy for measuring innovation coming out of our R&D teams; we review our progress monthly. We also provide performance incentives for innovation, and our R&D teams have specific goals and objectives designed around this metric. In 2009 we reworked our IP incentive effort so that inventors will benefit when their creation delivers real value for the company. Each year we invite key innovators to a dedicated Board of Directors dinner. |
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Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease (CMT)
Enabling scientist to more deeply understand the spectrum of disease more For Dr. James Lupski, Cullen Professor and Vice Chair for the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, the scientific quest is intensely personal. Dr. Lupski has Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease (CMT), as do three of his siblings. CMT is one of the most common inherited neurological diseases, affecting one in 2,500 people in the United States. For the past 20 years, Dr. Lupski has been searching for the genetic mutation causing this disease. In March 2010 he and his partner, Dr. Richard Gibbs, announced in the New England Journal of Medicine that they had found it. Lupski and Gibbs used the SOLiD® System, a next generation genomic analysis platform, to identify the key DNA mutations connected to his type of CMT. Through this collaboration between Life Technologies and Baylor College, scientists now can apply this methodology to the discovery of rare genetic variants in more than 12,000 other genetic diseases. Life Technologies is at the forefront of this pioneering enterprise. We are enabling scientists worldwide to more deeply understand the spectrum of disease by equipping them with rapidly evolving tools, and we are closing the gap between research and treatment by fully engaging with physicians in the clinical setting. Together, we are furthering the quest to make mass personalized medicine a reality. |
