Ken Murray
Co-founder 1978Background
Ken Murray co-founded Biogen in 1978 with the radical vision of applying recombinant DNA technology to the development of novel human therapeutics, a decision that shifted the company away from the traditional methods of drug discovery and established the foundational business model of scalable, reliable biologic manufacturing.
Role at Biogen Inc.
Biogen is one of the foundational pillars of the global biotechnology industry, founded in 1978 in Geneva, Switzerland, by a syndicate of some of the most brilliant and decorated scientists in human history. The founding group included two future Nobel Laureates: Walter Gilbert (a molecular biologist at Harvard who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a method to sequence DNA) and Phillip Sharp (a biologist at MIT who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of split genes). They were brought together by a brilliant venture capitalist named Kevin Kinsella and a seasoned pharmaceutical executive named Ray Schaefer. The founding of Biogen (which originally stood for 'Biotechnology Geneva') occurred precisely at the dawn of the recombinant DNA revolution. While its rival Genentech was focused on synthesizing human insulin, Biogen's founders were obsessed with interferon—a naturally occurring protein that scientists believed could be a miraculous cure for cancer and viral infections. In 1980, Charles Weissmann, one of Biogen's founding scientists, achieved a breakthrough by cloning leukocyte interferon alpha. This proved that a small biotech startup could outmaneuver the R&D budgets of legacy pharmaceutical giants. The company subsequently moved its headquarters to Cambridge, Massachusetts, anchoring what would become Kendall Square, the most densely concentrated biotechnology hub on Earth. While interferon ultimately proved to be a failure as an universal cancer cure, the deep, world-class scientific rigor established by Gilbert, Sharp, and Weissmann provided the foundational DNA that allowed Biogen to eventually pivot and dominate the treatment of multiple sclerosis.