Harold Snyder

Harold Snyder (April 25, 1922 – December 18, 2008) was an American businessperson who started Biocraft Laboratories, one of the earliest manufacturers of generic drugs.

Early life and education Snyder was born to a Jewish family in Manhattan and attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. He attended New York University for his undergraduate studies and was awarded a master's degree from Columbia University in 1950, majoring in natural science.

Biocraft Laboratories He founded Biocraft Laboratories in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, in 1964 together with his wife Beatrice, who headed the company's financial operations and developed its inventory system. The firm produced antibiotics, such as penicillin and tetracycline, waiting for the expiration of patents on brand-name medications and then producing generic equivalents at lower prices.

The firm was able to produce generic versions in 1981 of Co-trimoxazole, which had been manufactured and sold under the brand names Bactrim and Septra in 1981, with the generics sold for half the price of the brand-name equivalents. Biocraft was able to use documentation previously prepared by Hoffmann–La Roche and Burroughs Wellcome, the original makers of the two drugs, to cut the cost of creating the processes needed to manufacture generic versions and obtain FDA approval. Burroughs Wellcome filed an appeal of the decision to allow approval of the Biocraft generic versions, with Snyder arguing that "Every day they can keep the generics off the market means more money in their pockets".

The firm opened a plant in Missouri in the 1980s that produced the active ingredients for the company's medications, and shipped those products to the Biocraft facilities in New Jersey for assembly and distribution. Snyder patented the process in 1983, but did not develop the method on a commercial basis. Other bioremediation systems that use plants and microorganisms to clean up contaminants have been widely used since.