Maxygen was founded in 1997 to commercialize technologies originally conceived at Affymax Research Institute, then a subsidiary of what is now GlaxoSmithKline. Since then, the company has established a focus in human therapeutics, formed multiple partnerships with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, built a pipeline of product candidates and created industrial businesses with near-term product revenues. In 2000 Maxygen acquired Profound Pharma, a Danish biotechnology company located in Copenhagen, now known as Maxygen. The Danish subsidiary is focused on the development of improved second-generation protein pharmaceutical products and has developed broad pre-clinical development capabilities and proprietary technologies and expertise that help to address traditional shortcomings of protein pharmaceuticals such as half-life, stability and immunogenicity.