Chiron Corp.

Chiron Corporation

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Biotechnology
Fate	acquired as a subsidiary of Novartis
Founded	1981
Headquarters	Emeryville, California, USA
Products	Biopharmaceuticals, vaccines, blood testing
Revenue	$1.921 billion (2005)
Number of employees	5,400 (2005)
Parent	Novartis
Website	www.chiron.com

Chiron Corporation was an American multinational biotechnology firm based in Emeryville, California that was acquired by Novartis International AG on April 20, 2006. It had offices and facilities in eighteen countries on five continents. Chiron's business and research was in three main areas: biopharmaceuticals, vaccines, and blood testing. Chiron's vaccines and blood testing units were combined to form Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, while Chiron BioPharmaceuticals was integrated into Novartis Pharmaceuticals. In 2014, Novartis completed the sale of its blood transfusion diagnostics unit ("Novartis Diagnostics") to Grifols, S.A. (Barcelona, Spain) and announced agreements for the sale of its vaccines unit ("Novartis Vaccines").

Chiron (/ˈkaɪˌrɒn/ KY-rɑn after the centaur from Greek mythology) was founded in 1981 by chairman, William J. Rutter, president and chief executive, Professor Edward Penhoet, and vice president for research, Pablo DT Valenzuela. All were academics from the University of California; Penhoet at Berkeley, where he continued to lecture, and the others from San Francisco. Chiron formed a partnership with the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, Ciba-Geigy Ltd., through the Biocine Company, to use genetic engineering to develop vaccines and to treat, prevent and diagnose diseases such as AIDS, herpes and malaria. Other partnerships included Thicon Inc. to develop a growth factor hormone for the treatment of wounds and Merck & Co to develop an improvement to their existing hepatitis B vaccine. In 1986, Professor Penhoet said: "Our business strategy is to dominate small markets rather than take a small presence in a broad market." The niche that Chiron was focusing on was ophthalmology, which Mr. Penhoet said was "big enough to be interesting, but small enough to service with 40 salespeople." Professor Penhoet also stated that Chiron was set up to provide the enabling technology for others to use under license, and later saying that Chiron was "as close to a virtual corporation as you can be", with few fixed assets but more relationships.