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“City of Hope convinced me that if my donations were made public I could encourage others to do the same,” he told the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Dr. Riggs then developed the basics of monoclonal antibodies using recombinant DNA technology to trick bacteria into producing proteins that mimic human antibodies. This development has led to great advances in the treatment of cancer and other diseases.
In the 2000s, he turned to the question of epigenetics, which examines how markers added to a gene change the way that gene is “read”. Over the life of an organism, a gene gains or loses certain markers, a process influenced by changes in behavior and environment.
Epigenetics is an emerging and still poorly understood field. But even after retiring in October 2020, Dr. Riggs continued his research, confident that it would lead to even more life-saving discoveries.
“I could retreat to a South Pacific mansion and have fun on the beach,” he said in 2021, “but within a week I’d get bored.”
Arthur Dale Riggs was born on August 8, 1939, in Modesto, California, where his family owned a farm.
After losing their property in the Great Depression, his father, John Riggs, moved the family to San Bernardino, where he built and operated a trailer park. Despite only having an eighth grade education, John Riggs was adept at engineering to design the park’s electrical and plumbing systems himself; in his spare time he made autogyros combining elements of an airplane and a helicopter.
Arthur’s mother, Nelly (Calkins) Riggs, a nurse, spurred her son’s early interest in science, bought him a chemistry kit when he was a teenager and took him to the library, where he spent hours reading science fiction.
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