Dr. Orrie M. Friedman, 94, biotech pioneer
 Dr. Orrie M. Friedman founded Collaborative Research Inc. and was also a 
professor emeritus of chemistry at Brandeis. (Dominic Chavez/Globe 
Staff/File 2007)
By Bryan Marquard
Globe Staff / July 1, 2009

Weary of life in western Canada, where he supported himself playing poker 
after graduating from college, Orrie M. Friedman sneaked a ride on a cattle 
train to Montreal in 1935. Visiting a friend at McGill University, he 
recalled, stirred the "first quirks of intellectual curiosity'' in someone 
who, at that point, was far from scholarly.

"I went to the admissions office at McGill with my crappy academic record, 
not expecting to be admitted,'' Dr. Friedman told the Globe in 2007, "and it 
turned out the guy knew my father.''

The son of a bootlegger, Dr. Friedman found a calling in graduate school 
that was as far removed from his poker playing past as Montreal was from his 
boyhood home in tiny Grenfell, Saskatchewan. Dr. Friedman, who founded 
Collaborative Research Inc., which helped pioneer the field of 
biotechnology, then used his riches for philanthropy, died in his Brookline 
home Sunday of complications from Parkinson's disease. He was 94.

Working into his 90s, he had turned his attention to finding a treatment for 
Alzheimer's disease, which contributed to his brother's death several years 
ago. Until becoming ill, Dr. Friedman believed he would spend another decade 
conducting productive research.
"People in my family live forever,'' he said in the 2007 interview. "The old 
man didn't retire until he was 99, and lived to be 104.''

To see Dr. Friedman in his office at Brandeis University, where he was a 
professor emeritus of chemistry, was to believe he might just be right.
"Unlike others, who would want to be retired, he was ready for the next big 
discovery,'' said Nancy Winship, senior vice president of institutional 
advancement at Brandeis.

"And he always had a smile on his face as if to say, 'We're not quite there, 
but we could be soon.' ''

Dr. Friedman first began teaching at the Waltham campus in 1953, when he 
left a faculty position at Harvard Medical School to be part of the new 
Brandeis graduate chemistry program. In 1961, he left Brandeis to start 
Collaborative Research in the nascent days of an industry not yet called 
biotechnology.

"Orrie really is the founder of biotech,'' Al Kildow, a retired biomedical 
consultant, told the Globe in 2007. "His company was the first biotech 
company - though they didn't even call it biotech back then - and he set up 
the model that all other biotech companies followed, with an elite 
scientific advisory board to advise the directions they should pursue.''

He also set an example of how to keep a vibrant life outside the laboratory, 
skiing into his mid-80s and then picking up the brush to create painting 
after painting that captured the colors of the landscape around his vacation 
home in Taos, N.M. Using money made in biotechnology, Dr. Friedman and his 
wife, Laurel, donated $1.5 million to Temple Israel in Boston. The temple 
named its Trudy Friedman-Bell Religious School in honor of the Friedmans' 
daughter, who died in 1997 six months after giving birth to twins Lucy and 
Hannah.Continued...

"I can't take it with me and it's the least I can do,'' Dr. Friedman told 
the Globe two years ago.
In what Winship called the largest donation ever by a faculty member, he 
also donated $3.5 million to endow a chair in his name in chemistry at 
Brandeis.

"Orrie Friedman was really a man of remarkable talent,'' said Jehuda 
Reinharz, president of Brandeis. "He lived life as it should be lived, to 
the fullest, I would say, with both his head and his heart. Through his 
passionate pursuit of excellence in both science and medicine, his 
dedication to the advancement of scientific understanding improved and will 
continue to improve countless lives.''

While growing up, Dr. Friedman moved with his family from Saskatchewan to 
Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he graduated from the University of Manitoba in 
1935.

At McGill, he studied chemistry and received a doctorate for his study of 
RDX, an explosive under development for use in World War II. During 
postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School, he helped develop the cancer 
drug Cytoxan, before joining the Brandeis faculty.
In the late 1950s, Dr. Friedman met Laurel Leeder on a blind date. Each had 
been married before; they wed in January 1959.
"He was one of a kind,'' she said. "He marched to his own drummer. He was 
honest, honorable, single-minded, decent, and purposeful. It was quite a 
life journey.''

Much of that journey was spent at Collaborative Research, based in 
Lexington, where scientists conducted cutting-edge research into the 
relationship between genes and disease. More than three decades after 
founding the company, he retired as chairman, and the firm was sold and 
renamed Genome Therapeutics Corp.

"We pioneered a whole flock of areas,'' he told the Globe in 1994, the year 
he retired.

Dr. Friedman conceded, however, that "timing is everything in life.'' While 
Collaborative Research was "early, ahead of most people,'' other companies 
used venture capital to gain access to large sums of money, "while I wanted 
controlling interest, because I said, 'I don't need those guys to tell me 
how to run a company, I can do it myself.' ''

Soon after leaving Collaborative Research, he opened GrenPharma, housed in 
the Kalman building at Brandeis, and began researching Alzheimer's disease. 
Scientists there pursued a theory that a class of organic silica-based 
compounds could dissolve the amyloid plaque buildup that has been found in 
the brains of those diagnosed with the illness.

Success would have brought significant financial rewards, which he planned 
to donate to Brandeis if they materialized. Ever interested in expanding the 
boundaries of research, Dr. Friedman shrugged off the potential payoff.

"Considering where I started from and where I wound up,'' he said during the 
2007 interview, "life owes me nothing.''

In addition to his wife and granddaughters, Dr. Friedman leaves three sons, 
David of Katonah, N.Y., Hank of Taos, and Mark of Seattle.
A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. tomorrow in Temple Israel in 
Boston. Burial will be in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.


Rayilyn Brown
Director AZNPF
Arizona Chapter National Parkinson Foundation
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