Roger Tsien, 1952-2016: “I’ve al­ways been at­tract­ed to col­ors”

The No­bel Prize-win­ning chemist Roger Tsien died at the age of 64 yes­ter­day, trig­ger­ing a stream of glow­ing eu­lo­gies from the peo­ple who knew him or fol­lowed his work.

Best known for his ground­break­ing work on flu­o­res­cent pro­teins, the UC San Diego pro­fes­sor was al­so the in­spi­ra­tion for a string of biotechs set up in the San Diego area. Ave­las Bio­sciences just land­ed a $20 mil­lion round to pur­sue the de­vel­op­ment of a can­cer ‘il­lu­mi­na­tor’ dubbed AVB-620. That was the third start­up Aval­on Ven­tures had found­ed with Tsien’s help.

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