PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Award Recipient Jefferson Warns Against Patents That Obstruct Progress

	2005 ASPB Leadership in Science Public Service Award winner Richard Jefferson. Photo credit: Osmat Jefferson.

Even without his mandolin in hand at the ASPB annual meeting in Seattle, Richard Jefferson strummed a refrain of warnings against restrictive patents on plant research innovations.

Recipient of the 2005 ASPB Leadership in Science Public Service Award for outstanding contributions to science and humanity, Jefferson was the featured speaker in the Perspectives of Science Leaders Program coordinated by Committee on Public Affairs chair Pam Ronald and her colleagues.

As chairman and chief executive officer of CAMBIA, the Center for the Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture in Australia, Jefferson has succeeded in working through a complex web of patents to make plant transformation technology more widely available. He developed a workaround for a key enabling technology in plant biotechnology, Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. He and his colleagues found that other species of benign bacteria can be modified in a surprisingly simple way to do the same job, and the resulting gene transfer technology is to be made available on an “open source” basis as part of the biological open-source initiative (BIOS; Nature 431, 494; 2004).

Jefferson’s contribution of open source plant transformation vectors could have a major impact in making genetic engineering technologies freely available in the United States and developing world. His contributions are scientific but with substantial public service implications, observed Steve Howell, a member of the ASPB Committee on Public Affairs.

In his Perspectives presentation, Jefferson scorned the pursuit of financial enrichment through royalty-generating, restricted-use patents and urged scientists to stay focused on discoveries for the greater good of humanity. He said there needs to be further discoveries and dissemination of free-use technology tools, especially for millions of hungry people in developing countries.

ASPB president Roger Hangarter introduced Jefferson and presented him with the Leadership in Science Public Service Award.

Jefferson was born in 1956 in Santa Cruz, California, and began his molecular biology career in 1974 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, obtaining his bachelor’s degree in molecular genetics in 1978.

In 1985, with an NIH fellowship, he moved to the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI) in Cambridge, England, where he adapted the GUS system for plants and agriculture. The GUS reporter gene system—through active distribution to thousands of labs—is now arguably the most widely used tool in plant molecular biology. While working at PBI, Jefferson also initiated and managed the world’s first field release of a transgenic food crop on June 1, 1987.

In the past several years, Jefferson’s expertise in intellectual property matters and agriculture and biotechnology research strategy and policy worldwide have become widely recognized. He was chosen as an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur by the Schwab Foundation and is a regular participant and panelist at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting at Davos.

In December 2003, he was named by Scientific American to the List of World’s 50 most influential technologists and cited as the World Research Leader for 2003 for Economic Development.

He is recognized as a pioneer in new democratized innovation and intellectual property mechanisms and as the founder of the BIOS movement. He has been profiled in The Economist, New York Times, New Scientist, Financial Times, Science, Nature, Wired, and many other publications.

Jefferson is a dedicated musician, composing and performing on guitar and mandolin. Those familiar with him know his dedication extends beyond music to science and humanity.