- Person
- Stanley Cohen
- Lived
- b. 1935
- Field
- Genetics
- From
- American
The story
In 1973 Stanley Cohen of Stanford University and Herbert Boyer of the University of California, San Francisco, showed that genes could be cut out, joined to a plasmid and copied inside bacteria. Neither scientist had set out to make money from the discovery, and at first they were not interested in patenting it. Boyer went on to co-found the company Genentech in 1976, while Cohen stayed in academic research and served as a consultant to another firm, Cetus.
In 1974 the two men agreed to file a joint patent application, administered by Stanford on behalf of both universities. Three patents were eventually granted for the Boyer-Cohen process: one on the process itself in 1980, U.S. Patent No. 4,237,224, which was among the first biotechnology patents, a second on its use in bacterial hosts in 1984, and a third on its use in the cells of higher organisms in 1988.
Crucially, the licenses were granted non-exclusively and for a moderate fee, so that any company could use the technique rather than one firm controlling it. According to Wikipedia, 478 companies took licenses, and the patents became one of Stanford's top five sources of revenue. The National Library of Medicine records that the patent had issued 461 licenses before it expired in 1997. Thousands of products were developed on the basis of the Boyer-Cohen patents.
Because the patents covered the basic technology of gene splicing, they were unusually broad, and their validity was challenged several times in the 1980s. They dominated almost every other patent in molecular biotechnology. Yet the open licensing meant the method spread rather than being locked away: any company willing to pay the moderate fee could build on it legally.
The financial success of the patents for both Stanford and UCSF marked a shift in the way universities recognised the commercial value of their scientists' work, and it encouraged universities around the world to do the same. The Cohen-Boyer licenses remain a much-studied example of how a public university can share a fundamental discovery widely, help a new industry grow, and return income to research at the same time.
Why it matters
Broad, affordable licensing let hundreds of companies build on recombinant DNA, speeding the development of biotech medicines and research tools.
About Stanley Cohen
Stanford geneticist who, with Herbert Boyer, invented recombinant DNA cloning in 1973, the technique that launched genetic engineering and the biotechnology industry.
More about Stanley Cohen
- Stanley Cohen co-invented genetic engineeringIn 1973 Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer first moved genes between organisms, inventing recombinant DNA, the technique behind human insulin and the biotechnology industry.
- Stanley Cohen helped build biotechnology in TaiwanBeyond his Stanford laboratory, Stanley Cohen helped develop research collaboration with Taiwan's Institute of Molecular Biology and a biotechnology industry in Taiwan.
- Stanley Cohen investigated how bacteria resist antibioticsStanley Cohen's genetic engineering grew out of a medical question: how bacteria share genes that make them resistant to antibiotics.
- Stanley Cohen's plasmid pSC101 carried the first clonesStanley Cohen's plasmid pSC101, cut at a single site by Boyer's enzyme and carrying a tetracycline-resistance gene, became the vehicle for the first DNA cloning experiments in 1973.
- Stanley Cohen built tools to watch genes at workAfter inventing DNA cloning, Stanley Cohen developed techniques that use reporter genes to follow how genes behave in the cells of animals and other complex organisms.
- Stanley Cohen backed a safety pause on gene splicingStanley Cohen signed the 1974 letter calling for a voluntary pause on some recombinant DNA experiments until their risks could be assessed, and took part in the 1975 Asilomar conference.
- Stanley Cohen taught bacteria to take up new DNAIn 1972 Stanley Cohen’s Stanford lab showed that a calcium chloride treatment lets E. coli take up plasmid DNA and pass it on to their offspring.
Sources
- Stanley Norman Cohen Wikipedia
- Stanley N. Cohen Papers, biographical note National Library of Medicine
- Stanley N. Cohen National Inventors Hall of Fame
- Herbert W. Boyer and Stanley N. Cohen Science History Institute
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