https://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=146556
I thought Chiron (Which was bought out.) started it. That's who's listed as the patent applicant, but it looks like this was quite a multi-party endeavour; which does make sense.
Here's that patent:
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US2006257852#section=Patent-URL
But it ain't the only one, so top link makes even more sense.
