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ARTICLE | Company News

Orphan drug giant Termeer passes away

May 15, 2017 5:22 PM UTC

Henri Termeer, the former chairman, president and CEO of Genzyme Corp. and one of the handful of individuals who personified the biotech industry in its early decades, passed away May 12 at age 71.

Termeer joined tiny, struggling Genzyme in 1983 as president. Defying the advice of prominent scientists, he relentlessly pursued the development of an enzyme replacement therapy for Gaucher's disease, a rare lysosomal storage disorder. Termeer overcame enormous logistical hurdles: more than 22,000 human placentas were required to acquire enough enzyme to treat a single patient for a year...