Incyte in Palo Alto

In the 1990s the hottest idea in biotech was not a drug. It was data. Companies raced to read human genes and sell the results to drug makers. One of the biggest was Incyte, founded in Palo Alto in 1991 and based on Porter Drive in Stanford Research Park. For a decade it ran rows of sequencing machines and sold subscriptions to its gene database to many of the world's largest drug companies.

Then free public data caught up. Incyte closed its Palo Alto headquarters in 2004 and rebuilt itself in Delaware as a drug developer. This profile follows the Palo Alto chapter from founding to closure and notes what became of the company afterward.

Founding in 1991

Incyte Pharmaceuticals was incorporated in April 1991. Wikipedia dates the founding to April 8, 1991, in Palo Alto. Company histories say it was put together by Schroder Venture Advisers, a New York venture firm. Incyte bought assets and technology from Invitron Corporation, a St. Louis biotech company then being liquidated.

Two Invitron veterans led the new company. Roy A. Whitfield, who had been president of an Invitron subsidiary, became chief executive. Randall W. Scott, one of Invitron's founding scientists, became president and chief scientific officer. They set up in Palo Alto, close to Stanford's genetics labs and a growing pool of sequencing talent.

3160 Porter Drive

Incyte's address through the 1990s was 3160 Porter Drive, Palo Alto. Porter Drive runs through the middle of Stanford Research Park near Hillview Avenue and Hanover Street. In the 1990s and 2000s it became something like a biotech row. CV Therapeutics was at 3172 Porter Drive and Jazz Pharmaceuticals later set up at 3180 and 3170. The Hub, the park's coffee and bike repair stop, is at the Porter Drive end of Hillview today. Our Stanford Research Park guide has a map of the area.

LifeSeq: selling the genome

Incyte's flagship product was LifeSeq, a database of human gene sequences and data on where and how much each gene was active in different tissues. Customers paid for yearly subscriptions. The bet was that drug companies would pay to find promising targets before their competitors did.

The method relied on short pieces of sequence read from the messenger RNA that cells were actively using, often called expressed sequence tags. Reading many of these fragments from different tissues gave a rough picture of which genes were switched on where, long before the full human genome was finished. It was fast and cheap compared with reading whole genes, which made a subscription business possible.

It worked for a while. In June 1994 Pfizer became the first major subscriber, under an agreement valued at $24.8 million. By January 1996 the subscriber list also included Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Hoechst, Novo Nordisk and Pharmacia & Upjohn. In May 1996 a database release added public sequence data alongside Incyte's own.

The company went public in November 1993. It then grew through deals and spinoffs:

• 1996. Bought Genome Systems, adding a business supplying gene clones to researchers.
• September 1997. Launched diaDexus with SmithKline Beecham to develop gene based diagnostic tests.
• August 1998. Bought Hexagen, the base of a genetic variation business.
• March 2000. Renamed itself Incyte Genomics.
• December 2000. Bought Proteome, Inc. of Beverly, Massachusetts, maker of a protein function reference library.

The pivot to drugs

By 2001 the database model was under strain. Public genome data was growing fast and much of it was free. That year Incyte announced a major restructuring. It dropped its custom genomics business, laid off 400 workers and hired Paul A. Friedman as chief executive and Robert Stein as president and chief scientific officer. Whitfield stayed on as chairman. Wikipedia notes that scientists and chemists were recruited from DuPont. Company histories say Incyte brought in about 30 drug discovery scientists and signed research deals with Genentech and Medarex.

In early 2002 Incyte released DrugMatrix with Iconix Pharmaceuticals. The direction was clear. The company wanted to discover its own medicines instead of selling raw information to the companies that did.

Closing Palo Alto, 2004

On February 4, 2004, Incyte said it would close its Palo Alto research facilities and headquarters effective April 2, 2004. The move eliminated 257 jobs and was expected to save about $50 million a year. Chief executive Paul Friedman pointed to "the difficult realities of the genomic information marketplace" and said the company's most promising work was in drug discovery and development. Another executive said that as public domain data grew, it had become harder to sell high value subscriptions to LifeSeq and ZooSeq, its animal gene database. Incyte said it would keep its gene patents and its income from existing subscription agreements.

After the closure, Incyte was run from Delaware, where its new drug discovery team worked. It had bought Maxia Pharmaceuticals in 2003. In November 2013 it announced a new headquarters in Wilmington and finished moving in by the end of 2014.

What Incyte became

Incyte now develops and sells prescription drugs in oncology, inflammation and autoimmune disease. Its best known product is Jakafi (ruxolitinib), a JAK inhibitor first approved in the United States in 2011 for the bone marrow cancer myelofibrosis. Other marketed products listed by Wikipedia include Opzelura, a cream version of ruxolitinib, Pemazyre, Monjuvi and Iclusig. Bill Meury became chief executive in 2025.

The Palo Alto genomics company and the Wilmington drug company share a name and a legal history, but very little else. Almost none of today's products trace back to Porter Drive.

Timeline

Incyte's place in Palo Alto biotech

Incyte belongs to a cluster of 1990s Palo Alto genomics and drug companies that grew up on leased Stanford land, then left or were sold. Its story echoes Syntex, which closed its Palo Alto site in 2008. It also echoes the DNAX lab, which left in 2019. Today a different generation of life science companies works in the park, including diagnostics maker Guardant Health on Hanover Street. Founders weighing lab space and funding can start with our biotech investors guide.

There is no marker on Porter Drive. The buildings are private, so view them from the street. The California Avenue Caltrain station is the closest stop. The cafe at The Hub is the obvious place for coffee.

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