Robert A. Swanson; Biotech Pioneer, Financial Wizard Co-Founded Genentech Inc.

Robert A. Swanson, co-founder and pioneering leader of Genentech Inc., which as one of the first and most successful companies in the burgeoning biotechnology industry developed human insulin and human growth hormone, has died.

Swanson, a financial wizard with a chemistry degree who left Genentech in 1996, died Monday of brain cancer at his home in Hillsborough, a San Francisco suburb. He was 52.

Most recently, Swanson had been chairman of the board of Tularik Inc., a newer biotech firm that uses genetic engineering to create therapeutic drugs.

“As far as I’m concerned, he created the industry,” said David Goeddel, the first scientist Swanson hired at Genentech and now the chief executive officer of Tularik.

Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, called Swanson the force behind a new era of medicine based on recombinant DNA technology.

“His practical vision, along with that of Genentech’s other co-founder, Dr. Herb Boyer, catalyzed our industry, which has led to state-of-the-art drugs for many previously untreatable diseases, bringing relief to hundreds of millions of people,” Feldbaum said. “It is sad that the very forces that Bob Swanson put into place and energized could not afford him longer life.”

Swanson was recently named one of the 1,000 most important figures of the last 1,000 years and cited by Esquire magazine as a person whose life and work exemplified America’s highest qualities of courage, originality, ingenuity, vision and selfless service.

Respected around the world for his biotech leadership, Swanson was hailed by Japanese business publications as “the man who captured the rainbow” and was appointed to the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

“Bob’s life goal was to change the world for the better,” said his wife, Judy, “and he did.”

Shortly after scientists learned how to rearrange DNA in the 1970s, Swanson convinced UC San Francisco biochemist Herbert W. Boyer that his DNA research was commercially viable. Their South San Francisco-based Genentech was born.

That was in 1976, and Swanson quickly led the company to several firsts.

* In 1980, Genentech became the first biotech firm to go public. It showed a profit when it was less than 3 years old and last year reached annual sales of more than $4 billion.

* In 1983, the company’s human insulin, licensed to drug giant Eli Lilly & Co. for marketing, was the first genetically engineered drug to win Federal Drug Administration approval.

* In 1985, Genentech won approval for a genetically engineered human growth hormone that it marketed itself to become the first biotech firm selling a drug under its own label.

“From the company’s standpoint, it means we’re for real,” Swanson told The Times that year, shortly after the FDA approval of that growth drug, known commercially as Protropin. “The biotech industry has had a continual flow of progress, but the world will view this latest success as its coming of age.”

Swanson also helped make the pioneering company a leader in thrombolytic agent blood-clot dissolvers--used to treat heart attack patients--and interferon, for treatment of cancer and AIDS.

The early and continued success of Genentech, and to a lesser extent that of the biotech industry, was attributed to Swanson’s expert managerial talents. He was particularly known for his skills in guaranteeing financing and his ability to delegate responsibility in areas in which he lacked expertise.

Swanson served as chief executive officer of Genentech from its inception in 1976 until 1990 and then was chairman of the board until he left in 1996. He then founded the private investment management firm K&E; Management.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and reared in Florida, Swanson earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a master’s degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began his career as a venture capitalist with Citicorp Venture Capital Ltd. in New York and in 1973 opened its San Francisco office.

Two years later he joined the venture capital partnership of Kleiner & Perkins, now known as Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, of San Francisco, which provided a seed investment for Genentech.

Dedicated to his family and his community as well as business, Swanson coached his young daughters’ soccer teams, chaired the board of their private Nueva School and was a trustee of the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art and the San Jose Tech Center.

He also served on several advisory councils and visiting committees of his alma mater’s School of Biology and Sloan School of Management, and was a member of the Board of Fellows of the Harvard Medical School.

In addition to his wife, Swanson is survived by their daughters, Katie, 16, and Erica, 11, and his mother, Arline Swanson, of Foster City, Calif.

The family has asked that any memorial contributions be made to the Robert A. Swanson Charitable Fund at K&E; Management, 400 S. El Camino Real, Suite 1288, San Mateo, CA 94402.