William J. Rutter, a scientist who helped create the modern biotechnology industry as a founder of a company that turned breakthroughs from academic labs into commercial medicines, including the first genetically engineered vaccine and a therapy for multiple sclerosis, died on July 11 at his home in San Francisco. He was 97.
His daughter, Cindy Rutter, said the cause was complications of urothelial carcinoma, a cancer of the urinary system.
In 1981, Dr. Rutter and two University of California colleagues founded the Chiron Corporation in Emeryville, Calif. Along with the South San Francisco start-up Genentech, it established the Bay Area as the country’s biotech capital, a counterpart to the computing boom in Silicon Valley.
Chiron specialized in recombinant DNA technology, also known as gene splicing — the technique of snipping a gene from one organism and inserting it into the DNA of another organism.
In 1968 Dr. Rutter, a biochemist, was recruited by the University of California, San Francisco, to help transform it into a research powerhouse with funding from the National Institutes of Health. He helped pioneer the science of genetic engineering — a foundation of the biotech industry that set it apart from traditional pharmaceutical development.
He started Chiron (pronounced KY-ron) with Pablo D. T. Valenzuela, a fellow biochemist at U.C.S.F., and Edward E. Penhoet, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley; Dr. Rutter was chairman of the board. The company was named for a centaur in Greek mythology known for his skill in the healing arts
The company’s research led to the first genetically engineered vaccine, for hepatitis B, a widespread virus that attacks the liver with potentially fatal outcomes.
Chiron also helped sequence the H.I.V. genome that causes AIDS in 1984.
In 1993, the company won Food and Drug Administration approval for the first federally sanctioned treatment for multiple sclerosis, a nerve disorder affecting an estimated 300,000 Americans.
And Chiron discovered the hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough that enabled the development of diagnostic tests and treatments for a disease that once spread commonly through contaminated blood transfusions. A Chiron scientist, Michael Houghton, shared a 2020 Nobel Prize for discovering hepatitis C.
In 1995, Dr. Rutter received the Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment for his role in helping to create the biotechnology industry.
“Dr. Rutter was among the first to recognize the potential of biomedical sciences to produce marketable goods and services,” the award citation read.
Dr. Rutter was born on Aug. 28, 1927, in Malad City, Idaho, in the southeast corner of the state. His father, William Henry Rutter, ran a grocery store, and his mother, Eliza (Dredge) Rutter, was a bookkeeper.
At 15, Bill, as he was known, left his local high school to enroll in college in Utah. While there, he was identified and recruited by Harvard University through a program aimed at finding promising students from underrepresented regions. He graduated from Harvard with a B.S. in biochemistry in 1949. He earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Illinois in 1952 and taught chemistry there for a decade. He left to teach biochemistry and genetics at the University of Washington.
After joining U.C.S.F. as the chairman of its Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, he created a model in which elite scientists conducted research in small, independent laboratories.
In 1977, two of those laboratories — including one led by Dr. Rutter — made a breakthrough by isolating the gene for rat insulin and, through gene splicing, transplanting it into E. coli bacteria.
It was hailed as a milestone on the road to producing a genetically engineered human insulin, a hormone essential for life and deficient in millions of people with diabetes.
A fellow U.C.S.F. scientist, Herbert Boyer, who in 1976 founded Genentech with the venture capitalist Robert A. Swanson, went on to use gene splicing to produce the first synthetic human insulin. It went into mass production in 1982 under a license with Eli Lilly.
Besides his daughter, Dr. Rutter is survived by a son, William Henry Rutter II; a grandson; and two sisters, Helen Gygi and Karen Randall.
Throughout his business career, Dr. Rutter continued to hold academic positions at U.C.S.F., retiring in 1991 as an emeritus professor. The university said that he published over 380 scientific papers, many written with colleagues, and that he held more than 25 patents.
In 1987, Genetic Engineering News reported that Dr. Rutter held over $20 million in Chiron stock. In 1991, Chiron merged with Cetus, another Bay Area biotech company. Chiron went on to acquire European makers of vaccines, becoming the world’s fifth-largest vaccine maker.
In 2005, the Swiss-based Novartis agreed to buy Chiron in a deal that valued the company at $9.5 billion.
Trip Gabriel is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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