1994 – Biotech pioneer bet the store and lost

BOULDER — By 1994, Boulder County’s economy was decidedly on the upswing.

Housing construction was up, and commercial construction was up even more. There seemed to be endless green lights and mostly blue skies on the county’s economic horizon.

For the county’s star biotech company, Synergen, however, times were not so good.

In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, major universities across the nation were home to an antsy group of some of the best and brightest molecular biologists in the world. The University of Colorado Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, or MCDB, department was no exception. At that time it…