That’s a good point, yeah I should have thought of gene therapy. Yes, very, very interesting field and a lot of different ways of getting there. We at HudsonAlpha, we have a company that’s using – they have a technology for delivering DNA to cells, so they are currently in phase-two trials of delivering a plasma that expresses IL-12 and for treating ovarian cancer. And so the ability to take DNA and put it in a cell, in their case it’s sort of I guess brut force in the sense that they lavage the abdominal cavity with the solution and the DNA is picked up by all of those cells. But another company in the. . . at HudsonAlpha, is developing a polymer that will actually direct a small molecule or a gene therapy target to a specific tissue, rather than throughout your body. You might administer it through the bloodstream, but it would go where it’s supposed to go instead of just going everywhere.

Jim Hudson scientist and businessmen who founded Research Genetics in 1987, the company that made synthetic DNA. He received a dual major in chemistry and physics from the University of Alabama and studied molecular biology. His company was very successful and dominated the market for synthetically made DNA in USA. That allowed Research Genetics to play a main role in the Human Genome Project. Company was sold in 2000 to Invitrogen.

Jim Hudson is co-founder of HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville. Together with his wife he formed a biodefense company, Concero Scientific.

More information: Technology Alabama