He is a founder of several biotechnology companies, including Cambridge Biosciences, The Virus Research Institute, ProScript, LeukoSite, Dendreon, Diversa, X-VAX, and Demetrix.

He was raised at the Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake in the Mojave Desert of California, surrounded by weapons scientists and engineers.

As a pre-medical undergraduate student majoring in chemistry, he published two scientific papers, one on the composition of the Martian atmosphere in Science[2] and a second on the use of isotope shifted lasers for communication to outer space in Applied Physics Letters.

His work, in collaboration with several other scientists, provided unexpected insights into the process of retrovirus replication and was recognized as innovative in publication in leading scientific journals.

He interrupted his postdoctoral studies at MIT briefly the summer of 1973 to serve as a visiting professor at the University of Copenhagen Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, where he continued his work on the regulation of gene expression in bacteria.

Another impact for science was his work on the small genetic elements upstream of the transcription start site, now called enhancers, which determine the rate at which genes are copied into RNA.

[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] These studies led to a deeper insight into the action of many anti cancer treatments and formed the basis for the creation of the Division of Biochemical Pharmacology.

[50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59] The work revealed a new and unexpected form of sun-induced DNA damage, called the 6-4 lesion, is responsible for most mutations in sun exposed skin that cause cancers including melanoma.

With help from the Centers of Disease Control, this group formed the hypothesis that AIDS was caused by a human retrovirus similar to HTLV.

His views were considered highly controversial as summarized in a book, The Myth of Heterosexual Aids: How a Tragedy Has Been Distorted by the Media and Partisan Politics by Michael Fumento.

Over the next several years his laboratory isolated each of the genes and their proteins in pure form and developed methods that were used by the pharmaceutical companies to discover new anti viral drugs.

Haseltine proposed the use of combination chemotherapy, targeting multiple drugs against different viral proteins as the basis for effective therapy.

[93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100] Today those ideas have proven out; the pharmaceutical industry has developed more than forty drugs that inhibit the HIV polymerase, protease, integrase, and envelope proteins.

Combinations of these drugs have transformed HIV infection from a near universally fatal disease to one that with proper management usually can be successfully treated for decades.

His laboratory went on to discover additional viral genes and proteins – vpr,[114][115][116][117] vpu,[118][119][120][121] vif,[122] and nef[123][124][125][126][127] – required for efficient virus growth in some but not all circumstances.

His laboratory showed that dendritic cells that pass back and forth through the mucous membranes of the reproductive tract are carriers transporting HIV into the body to begin the process of infection.

[89][129][130] Working with a colleague he recruited to study monkey models of the disease, he showed that it was possible to reduce the incidence of maternal child transmission, the first proof that this was possible.

[132] The laboratory also created hybrid viruses that carry some monkey and some HIV genes-the so-called SHIV viruses-so that new drugs and vaccines could be developed using primate models.

Haseltine then helped design programs to transfer knowledge from academic laboratories to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to develop new anti viral drugs.

To address this issue, Haseltine suggested that NIAID create a special grant program to encourage pharmaceutical and biotech companies to work on HIV related problems.

Under this program a relatively large amount of money was granted to academic scientists provided that their laboratory have a pharmaceutical or biotechnology partner capable of translating knew knowledge to new drugs.

Haseltine's interest in biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies arose from his desire to convert new knowledge into new ways to treat and cure disease.

The first product, developed for the French company Virbac, was a vaccine to protect domestic cats from infection by the feline leukemia virus.

The company was eventually renamed Dendreon Corp. and successfully brought to market the first approved cell-based immune therapy, Provenge, for the treatment of metastatic prostate cancer.

At the time, the idea that newly isolated human genes of unknown function could prove useful for drug development was widely criticized.

Haseltine argued that if one new human gene were discovered, the techniques of modern biology would allow its natural function and potential medical use identified.

New tools had been developed that allowed what had been tedious hard work of gene isolation and characterization to be replaced by highly automated instruments and the data regarding the structure, tissue and cell location and the results of functional tests to be stored and easily accessed using advanced computer technologies.

Abthrax was approved by the FDA and is currently stockpiled by the US government under BioShield BARDA [Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority] regulations.

[145][146] At a conference near Lake Como, Italy in 1999,[147] he explained that several new technologies – including gene therapy, stem cell therapy, tissue engineering, and biomechanical prosthetics – collectively opened up a new ability, to which he applied the term "regenerative medicine" in the way that it is used today: "an approach to therapy that ... employs human genes, proteins and cells to re-grow, restore or provide mechanical replacements for tissues that have been injured by trauma, damaged by disease or worn by time" and "offers the prospect of curing diseases that cannot be treated effectively today, including those related to aging.

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