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The conceptual eral nineteenth-century mill buildings on the Manchester river- idea of the pump wasn’t very hard,” he remembers, “but mak- front to house the company. And he continued his hobby of ing a device that is going to have lethal, toxic amounts of drug collecting antique engines and machinery, some of which are in it that has to work right all the time—that turned out to be displayed in his office. ” A new kind of microchip that Although the engines are often beautiful, his interest in an- required very little power had recently come out and Kamen tique technology is not merely aesthetic.

Joseph Vacanti and that also has chemical characteristics that will make it stop of Harvard University began working on growing human skin in at a certain part of the cell, where it will release a payload of DNA. the lab in the 1980s. Skin cells were grown on a two-dimen- Although the fields Langer has helped create—biomedical sional frame made of polyanhydrides. As the cells multiplied polymers and tissue engineering—are barely 25 years old, they and became a coherent tissue, the polymer frame biodegraded, have already benefited millions of people.

King Wiseman, Andy Futreal, and Mark Skolnick found BRCA1. Since found that several families—but not all of them—shared this then, another breast cancer gene (BRCA2) has been found, and marker. Looking at some of the data, King thought she might research continues on other genetic causes of cancer. have found the right location for the gene, but wasn’t sure. The discovery of BRCA1 and BRCA2 has led to genetic Then one of her students, Beth Newman, suggested that screening for people from families with a history of breast can- they include the age at which the people had first been diag- cer.