From Kentucky farm to founding Biogen: New documentary traces life of Phil Sharp
- maura169
- Jun 13
- 3 min read
BOSTON, June 13, 2025 / By Hannah Green – Reporter, Boston Business Journal
Read on bizjournals.com
The name Phil Sharp is well-known in Boston's life sciences industry. The Nobel laureate and co-founder of Biogen Inc. and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. is widely credited with helping kickstart Massachusetts’ development as a global biotech hub.
A new documentary about Sharp, which will be screened next week during the BIO International Convention, dives deeper into his story, from his roots growing up with dyslexia and in severe poverty on a Kentucky tobacco farm to his breakthrough discovery of RNA splicing that helped kickstart the biotech revolution.
The film, called “Cracking the Code: Phil Sharp & the Biotech Revolution,” was produced by Uncommon Productions and directed by Bill Haney, a filmmaker and entrepreneur who is also the founder and CEO of Skyhawk Therapeutics. The screening will be on June 17 at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art.
Haney and Sharp, who is 81, spoke with the Boston Business Journal recently about the motivation behind the film.
An American tale
Haney set out to tell the story of Sharp’s life and his scientific accomplishments, as well as the values he embodied as he went about his career.
“There is a humility and grace with which he accomplishes great things, which I think of as being the best of America, but, infrequently on display these days,” Haney said. “That combination of being a great scientist, visionary entrepreneur — and just the kind of human being you want your kids to try to emulate — is a very, very rare and precious thing.”
Haney sees America as an “inventor society” from its beginnings, and called out the Trump administration's steps to cut National Institutes of Health funding and push international researchers out of the United States since taking office, among other actions.
“There's a different view, political view, that is less interested in supporting science-based innovation, academic basic research. And I think that poses an existential threat to the fabric of the United States,” Haney said.
Rather than debate in theory the importance of science and inventors in America, Haney wanted to showcase a real-life example.
“If you want to tell a big story, tell a small story,” Haney said. “I think there's a part of what's played out in our society of folks wondering whether the American Dream is still alive and well, and Phil's story is a spectacular example of it being alive and well.”
For his part, Sharp appears as humble as Haney describes, and is clearly uncomfortable with the praise. But he says he agrees with the greater goal.
“If the story motivates people to become involved in helping others, creating jobs, creating an economy, and to become educated, I'm willing to be very uncomfortable,” Sharp said.
The pair says the film also speaks to the importance of public research and private investment in creating scientific innovation and new medicines in the United States.
Sharp and Haney warned that these cuts to scientific funding have the potential to deeply damage the biotech ecosystem that leaders like Sharp spent decades building.
“Here in New England, we have the most special community in the world. There's no question about it. It's recognized as the most special community in the world. We built that mostly in the first 20 years. We can lose it in the next two,” Sharp said.