Be­zos, Paul Allen funds, a16z put up $100M to build an Il­lu­mi­na of hu­man pro­teins

Beam­ing in from the wood­en ta­ble of his West Coast home, an 80-year-old Lee Hartwell re­calls the ear­ly days of the ge­nom­ic rev­o­lu­tion, when it seemed like can­cer might be­come the an­swer to an equa­tion: Learn its ge­net­ic ba­sis, learn its an­ti­dote.

The 2001 No­bel Prize win­ner was still pres­i­dent of the Fred Hutchin­son Can­cer Re­search Cen­ter dur­ing those ear­ly years, at the start of the mil­len­ni­um. The idea held promise then, he said. Re­al­i­ty has been tougher.

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