A Rare Breed: How people and perseverance built BioMarin into one of the world's most innovative companies

BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc., named by Forbes magazine as one of the world ten most innovative companies, is a world leader in developing therapies to treat rare orphan genetic diseases. A Rare Breed recounts the first 20 years of its history, the struggles it faced in developing drugs for diseases that represented markets most pharmaceutical companies saw as too small to pursue, and how it grew into a global enterprise valued at more than $16 billion. It follows the researchers, patients, and executives who played a role in taking novel ideas forward and how they overcame scientific, regulatory, and financial challenges to bring breakthrough therapies to children who needed them. Today, the company continues to go where science leads it, working to treat debilitating and deadly diseases without treatments, or significantly improve on the treatments that do exist. BioMarin s culture revolves around the ethos that no disease should go untreated, and its people are driven to discover, develop, and commercialize medicines that give patients, their families, and their caregivers hope where there was little or none. "What they are doing at BioMarin is changing the lives of families around the world. They are not producing a product. They are truly finding tomorrows." Mark Dant, Executive Director of the National MPS Society