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As the former Soviet Union moves away from its command economy, Russian scientists are beginning to assume business responsibilities. One of them who is becoming active in Central New Jersey is Victor G. Kartsev, president of Syntest Princeton in Plainsboro. The company has started to provide biologically active chemical compounds to large pharmaceutical and chemical companies in this region. Kartsev heads the Laboratory of Biologically Active Compounds of the Institute of Chemical Physics in Chernogolovka, near Moscow. In addition to being a chemist, he is also a pianist, but these days he sits down at a piano mainly to give his daughter a lesson.
BUSINESS. How did you decide to start Syntest Princeton?
KARTSEV: Our Institute of Chemical Physics near Moscow is the biggest in the Academy of Sciences. It has several thousand employees, many of whom are scientists, and in the past it had major scientific programs that were financially supported by our government. As our country's economic problems worsened, it became difficult for us to get hard currency. Without hard currency, we could not get scientific journals, modern equipment or chemicals. But we still had resources we could use. We have a large number of creative scientists, who have synthesized a lot of interesting chemical compounds. More than 300,000 compounds have been synthesized in about 600 institutes--we have an unbelievable collection. On the other hand, the facilities for screening these compounds in our country are extremely poor. We knew that pharmaceutical and chemical companies abroad can screen thousands of compounds a year. That was why we decided to start a joint stock company to see...