The making of a consortium

The story of Rhône-Poulenc Rorer Inc.'s new RPR Gencell gene therapy consortium is the story of the birth of a corporate strategy, and of the ability of a large company to put together a critical mass of technology in a way that would be hard for small biotech companies to duplicate.

The consortium of 14 companies and institutions, announced last week, has been in gestation since January 1991, six months after the merger between Rhône-Poulenc and Rorer, when the company was considering what its corporate strategy should be going forward, and how it would fill its pipeline...