The Ties That Break: University, Company Part Ways After Transomic Mouse Success

Research stalls as a commercial agreement on the technology's future eludes Cytogen and the University of Pennsylvania Last year, two University of Pennsylvania biologists crossed the species barrier in a big way. Little did they know that their feat would lead to crossfire between their institution and the company that sponsored the work. Nor did they anticipate that continued scientific progress would be a casualty of this skirmish. Last July, Jean Richa and Cecilia Lo announced in Science (

Lisa Bain

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Research stalls as a commercial agreement on the technology's future eludes Cytogen and the University of Pennsylvania

Last year, two University of Pennsylvania biologists crossed the species barrier in a big way. Little did they know that their feat would lead to crossfire between their institution and the company that sponsored the work. Nor did they anticipate that continued scientific progress would be a casualty of this skirmish.

Last July, Jean Richa and Cecilia Lo announced in Science (245:175, 1989) that they had successfully introduced human chromosomes into mice by injecting chromosome fragments into developing mouse embryos. The work was sponsored by Cytogen Corp., a Princeton, N.J., biotechnology company that hopes to create animals capable of producing the whole repertoire of human antibodies.

Since then the work has come to a virtual standstill. It is bogged down by disagreements over who - the university or Cytogen - owns the rights ...

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