In 1988, Stanford Medicine researchers Irving Weissman and Mike McCune created an animal model that can be used to study a variety of human diseases.

McCune’s initial crazy idea led to a revolutionary event in medical history with the creation of chimeric mouse.  He went on to show that it was useful model for studying AIDS.  McCune and his colleagues confirmed that a group of SCID-hu (for human) mice had been infected with HIV, the AIDS virus, and that the virus had reproduced and spread within the mice’s human immune cells.

Because university safety regulations prevented McCune from continuing his research with HIV-infected animals at Stanford, in early 1988 McCune, along with Weissman, Caltech molecular biologist Leroy Hood, and Nobel-winning molecular biologist David Baltimore, began the search for funds to start a private research firm. SyStemix was born.