Phillip A. Sharp, who was awarded the 2002 Biotechnology Heritage Award along with his colleague Walter Gilbert, is a central figure in the history of industrial biotechnology. In 1979 he, Gilbert, and several others founded Biogen, an early pioneer in the field of biotechnology. Sharp was chairman of the scientific board at Biogen and a member of its board of directors. He also advised on the formation of Genentech, another major biotechnology company, and is cofounder of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, where he serves as chairman of the scientific board and is a member of the company’s board of directors.
Sharp attended Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky, majoring in chemistry and mathematics, receiving his B.A. in 1966. He then pursued graduate studies at the University of Illinois. In 1969 Sharp began work as a postdoctoral student at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), a center for molecular biology research. While at Caltech, Sharp studied bacterial genetics and human gene expression and then did further postdoctoral work, on viral genetics, under James Watson at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
In 1974 Sharp began a professorship at the newly established Center for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), continuing his work in viral genetics. In 1977, while at the center, Sharp and his team discovered “split genes,” or introns—noncoding intervening DNA sequences that are dispersed throughout coding regions of DNA; he shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine (with Richard J. Roberts) for this discovery. Sharp found (as did Roberts independently) that individual genes are often interrupted by long sections of DNA that do not encode protein structure.
Sharp was director of the MIT Center for Cancer Research from 1985 to 1991 and remains a member. He is also past head of the MIT Department of Biology and past director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the University of Illinois Alumni Achievement Award, the Walker Prize from the Boston Museum of Science, the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society, and honorary doctorates from many universities.
