Scientist whose novel technique led to creation of synthetic insulin and other innovations declined many offers from biotech companies

A “relatively undiscovered and certainly underappreciated” innovator whose work jumpstarted the biotechnology industry and led to the development of synthetic insulin for diabetes patients has died at age 82. Arthur Dale Riggs, a medical researcher and biochemist, died of lymphoma on March 23 at a hospital in Duarte, Calif., according to a report in The Washington Post. Working with other scientists–some of whom became prominent biotechnology entrepreneurs–Riggs led a project to develop a synthetic version of insulin. Their success was a lifesaving development for millions for people with diabetes. It also eliminated the need to extract insulin from animals–mostly cows–which resulted in a product with a high rate of allergic reactions. Read: Organ transplants from pigs: Medical miracle or pandemic in the making? The creation of synthetic insulin can be traced back to 1977, when Riggs and his team embarked on a groundbreaking experiment to develop a synthetic version of a mammalian hormone somatostatin, which inhibits the secretion of other hormones. The team reverse-engineered the hormone’s genetic code to create an artificial somatostatin but initial tests showed the synthetic gene was unstable when injected inside a bacterium. Riggs came up with a solution: combine the somatostatin gene with a larger protein to give it more stability. The result is what Riggs has described as “the first human-designed and man-made gene that functioned in any organism. It was the first mammalian hormone produced in bacteria, and it jump-started the biotechnology industry.” “He was right there, at one of the starting points of the modern biotech industry — his team at the City of Hope was the first to make a gene that worked to treat a disease,” Peter Dervan, a chemistry professor at Caltech, told the Business Journal. “Yet even though his work has improved the lives of millions of diabetics worldwide, he is relatively undiscovered and certainly underappreciated.” Read: Good long-term glycemic control can keep diabetics with COVID out of the ICU Using the same approach to somatostatin, Riggs and his collaborators turned their attention to insulin, a more complex hormone with 51 proteins and two polypeptide chains that needed to be connected. By comparison, somatostatin has 14 amino acid components. The team coded a gene for human insulin and, in 1978, created synthetic insulin. This led to a partnership with the pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly to market the product under the brand name Humulin. In a way, Riggs prophesied the development of synthetic insulin a decade earlier, when he theorized that genetic modification as an emerging science might be useful in treating diabetes. The genetic technique that Riggs developed with fellow scientist Keiichi Itakura is also the foundational technology for monoclonal antibodies, widely used today in treating cancer, autoimmune disorders, macular degeneration, COVID-19 and other disorders. Despite holding patents on all his developments, Riggs declined all offers to join biotechnology companies and chose instead to stay at City of Hope, a Duarte, Calif., medical and research centre where he has worked for more than 50 years. Read: Scientists finally finish decoding entire human genome

Scientist whose novel technique led to creation of synthetic insulin and other innovations declined many offers from biotech companies

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