KEY POINTS:
Ross Clark, one of New Zealand's top scientists, has died in Auckland, aged 57.
Professor Clark had fought a long battle with malignant melanoma.
Close friend, colleague and BioPacificVentures executive director Howard Moore said Professor Clark would be remembered in the scientific community as "Mr IGF-1".
He helped to develop and commercialise the drug Increlex (insulin-like growth factor-1) for the treatment of short-stature children.
He worked for US firm Genentech between 1988 and 1997 and was a key scientist on the development of the drug.
Genentech decided to shut the project down in 1997 but in 2000 Professor Clark and Mr Moore formed a company called Tercica, completed a US$20 million ($26.5 million) fundraising by 2002 and negotiated a deal to license the intellectual property.
Tercica moved to the US and listed on the Nasdaq in 2004. The drug has been on sale for about two years.
"It was his passion so the opportunity was there to establish a company and we had a dream of doing it and that dream was fulfilled," Mr Moore said.
"There are very few scientists anywhere in the world who are able to maintain a contribution to and an association with a drug like that."
Professor Clark was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to biotechnology and won the NZBio Distinguished Biotechnologist of the Year Award for his work with Tercica.
The professor, who grew up in Taranaki and got a PhD in veterinary physiology from Massey University, put New Zealand on the world stage in terms of IGF-1.
Other organisations he worked for included the National Institute for Medical Research in the UK, NeuronZ and the agriculture biotech company ViaLactia Biosciences. He was chairman of the biofuel technology company LanzaTech.
ROSS CLARK, ONZM
* Professor of endocrinology, University of Auckland.
* Born Inglewood 1951.
* Died Auckland 2008, aged 57.
