- Person
- Stanley Cohen
- Lived
- b. 1935
- Field
- Genetics
- From
- American
The story
Stanley Cohen was born in 1935 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and grew up in a Jewish family. He trained as a physician at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1968 joined Stanford University's School of Medicine, where he studied plasmids, small rings of DNA that bacteria swap with each other and that often carry genes for antibiotic resistance. Herbert Boyer, at the University of California, San Francisco, was working with EcoRI, an enzyme discovered in his laboratory that cut DNA at precise points and left staggered, "sticky" ends that could latch on to other pieces cut the same way.
In November 1972 both men gave papers at a US-Japan meeting on plasmids in Hawaii. Boyer described how EcoRI cut DNA; Cohen reported a method his laboratory had developed for getting plasmid DNA into bacteria. Over sandwiches late one night, they planned a joint project.
The collaboration was very close. Plasmids isolated at Stanford by Cohen and Annie Chang were taken to San Francisco, where Boyer and Robert Helling cut them with EcoRI. The fragments went back to Stanford to be joined and introduced into E. coli bacteria, which copied the new combinations as they multiplied. The first success came in spring 1973, using one of Cohen's plasmids, pSC101. Their 1973 paper, Construction of biologically functional bacterial plasmids in vitro, is considered a landmark in genetic engineering.
They soon went further. They transferred genes from Staphylococcus, a different species of bacteria, into E. coli, and then genes from the African clawed frog, overturning the long-held belief that genes could not be moved between very different organisms.
The technique made it possible to turn bacteria into factories for human proteins. In 1978 Boyer and Keiichi Itakura built a plasmid coding for human insulin, and recombinant insulin, sold as Humulin, was approved in 1982 as the first biotechnology product on the market. Thousands of products have since been based on the method, including human growth hormone and the hepatitis B vaccine. Cohen's honours include the Lasker Award in 1980, the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 1981 and the National Medal of Science in 1988.
Why it matters
Recombinant DNA underpins modern medicines such as insulin, growth hormone and many vaccines, helping millions of patients worldwide.
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 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.
- Stanley Cohen's patent was licensed to hundreds of firmsThe Cohen–Boyer recombinant DNA patents were licensed non-exclusively, for moderate fees, to 478 companies, spreading gene cloning across the biotechnology industry.
Sources
- Herbert W. Boyer and Stanley N. Cohen Science History Institute
- Stanley Norman Cohen Wikipedia
- Stanley N. Cohen National Inventors Hall of Fame
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