LOUISIANA RESEARCH


	Dr. Richard Cooper The scientist who made Chickens lay 'Golden' Eggs By Linda Foster Benedict Richard Cooper didn't start his scientific career thinking his claim to fame would be chickens. But he's the LSU AgCenter scientist who's come up with a way to get chickens to lay eggs containing human proteins. These chickens are the reason a new biotechnology company that will manufacture a precursor of insulin is located in an LSU AgCenter laboratory on the Baton Rouge campus. Beginning in 2004, this company, TransGenRx, appears likely to earn millions of dollars in annual sales with a potential for spin-off companies that will use Cooper's patented technology to produce more pharmaceuticals at a fraction of the cost of conventional methods. Fresh from earning a Ph.D. in medical microbiology at the University of Georgia, Cooper came to the LSU AgCenter in 1990 to make channel catfish more disease-resistant. He'd been fascinated by fish diseases since his teen years in Jackson, Miss., when he managed to kill a thousand dollars' worth of saltwater fish at his dad's new pet store. "I wanted to fix the problem and find out what caused it," Cooper says. That same curiosity led him to question why it was so difficult to insert disease-resistant genes into catfish. At that time the technology guaranteed only a 1 percent success rate. The other 99 percent of the catfish that had undergone the gene-altering procedure did not stay disease-resistant. "I didn't like the odds," Cooper says. Over the next few years, he developed techniques that made for a better equation. Now, 50 percent to 80 percent of the offspring of genetically altered catfish are disease-resistant. His patented techniques involve three things. First, he shortened the sequence of the piece of DNA that's inserted into the organism by nearly 80 percent. This made transformation happen faster. Second, he inserted the foreign DNA piece further "upstream" in the animal's DNA sequence. This, too, speeded up the process. Third, he made sure the transporters of the foreign DNA, called "vectors," self-destructed once they'd done their job. This is crucial for stability, allowing the desired traits to be passed on to the offspring. Otherwise, the foreign DNA could move and get out of sequence, and the alteration would not occur. Meanwhile, a sequence of chance events happened in Cooper's life that moved him from fish tanks to chicken coops. He was at a crossroad about where to go with the transgenic technology used with the fish-from a commercial viewpoint. Federal law will not allow transgenic catfish to be grown commercially because of concerns that they will escape into the wild. The only way the business of growing transgenic, disease-resistant catfish could develop was if the catfish were sterile. No one has yet found a way to make catfish sterile. "Mother Nature has made this difficult," said Fred Enright, chair of the LSU AgCenter's Department of Veterinary Science. Through the LSU AgCenter's intellectual properties office, Cooper became acquainted with biochemist-turned-businessman Bill Fioretti of Dallas, Texas. Together, they hatched a plan to try to make insulin with transgenic chickens. Cooper and the LSU AgCenter have since patented the technology for inserting genes in chickens and TransGenRx was formed to take advantage of Cooper's wizardry. In the world of biotech startup companies, the race is on to produce human proteins, such as insulin, in a cost-effective manner. So far, Cooper and TransGenRx are ahead of the competition with their flock of transgenic chickens.