Ralph Brinster, a professor at Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine and a pioneer in the use of genetic transplants in the reproduction of mice, has received the prestigious Bower Award from Philadelphia's Franklin Institute. The Award, announced Tuesday, Oct. 15, noted his "ground-breaking" scientific methods "to understand the activity and function of genes."

The Bower Award comes with a $250,000 cash prize, the largest scientific prize in the country. Earlier this year, Brinster shared a $100,000 prize in developmental biology from the March of Dimes. "It must be my year," said Brinster.

The award citation stated that Brinster's "unique contributions to the growing field of biotechnology, arising from a life-long fascination with animals, and his leadership in veterinary education, reflect the scientific and humanitarian genius of Benjamin Franklin. [His] interest in animals, developed in childhood, has evolved to the highest level of inquiry, and his contributions will shape our lives in the next century."

Unlocking the mysteries of genes and their expression -- particularly to introduce genetic modifications in living systems -- could lead to the prevention of birth defects and inherited diseases, and could create new strains of food-producing plants and improvements in livestock and animal husbandry.

Brinster is currently the Richard King Mellon Professor of Reproductive Physiology at the veterinary school.

The Franklin Institute will host a convocation ceremony on May 1, when Brinster will be presented with a gold medal engraved with an image of Benjamin Franklin. The Bower Award was established through a bequest by the late Philadelphia chemical manufacturer Henry Bower.

Brinster received his Ph.D. from Penn in 1960 and then joined the veterinary school's faculty. At that time, he did pioneering work in the understanding of animal embryos, which set the foundation for his later work in the transferring genes from one species to another.

In the 1970s, Brinster helped develop a now-common technique used to combine cells from different embryos. Such combinations, he found, led to single offspring called "chimeras" made from a mix of two types of ce lls --carrying the genes of four parents.

In 1982 he gained further notoriety by transferring genes for rat growth hormone into mice and producing mice that grew into "supermice" --twice their normal size. Two years ago he transferred sperm-producing cells, called stem cells, from one mouse to another, allowing one mouse to produce sperm carrying the genes of another mouse. Last year, he carried that research a step further. Brinster took frozen rat spermatogonial stem cells -- the cells that produce sperm -- thawed them and grew them in the testes of living mice. The mice produced rat sperm along with their own.

Brinster was born in 1932 and grew up on a small farm in Cedar Grove, N.J. When he was 13 years old he started a small poultry business, which he maintained and expanded during his high school years and which paid for much of his college education. He served for two years in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, then returned to the United States to continue his graduate work.

He has published more than 300 papers in scientific journals, and is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Science, and the recipient of the Charles-Leopold Mayer prize, the highest award offered by the French Academy of Sciences.

Return to Compass Features for October 22, 1996