Biomarin was founded in 1997 by Christopher Starr Ph.D and Grant W Dennison Jr with a $1.5 million investment from Glyko Biomedical. It is the world lead in developing and commercializing innovative biopharmaceuticals for rare diseases. Of these diseases the patient population mostly consists of children. The core business and research is in enzyme replacement therapies (ERT’s). Biomarin was the first company to provide therapeutics the for mucopolysaccharidosis type 1 (MPS-1). The total patients for some rare diseases are as few as 1000 patients. It was the first to provide therapeutics for phenylketonuria (PKU) as well as other rare diseases. The current net income of Biomarin is 134 million dollars per year. They were ranked 10th on Forbes list of innovative companies. They currently have 5 drugs that are available on the market--each is an orphan drug. Orphan drugs are pharmaceutical agents that has been developed specifically to treat a rare medical condition, the condition itself being referred to as anorphan disease. I feel like we should have had a unit in this kind of thing before we had a field trip in it. I liked seeing all machines in the lab. They looked cool and interesting. I would like to have learned more about how to use the machines and what they were used for. Overall this was a great experience for me and my classmates.