On Oct. 10, 1989, Ohio University (OU) announced that it had received a patent for a genetic engineering process that has revolutionized medical and agricultural research.

In 1981 an OU research team led by Thomas Wagner, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Ohio University, and Peter C. Hoppe, a research scientist at Jackson Laboratories in Bar Harbor, Maine, made worldwide headlines by successfully producing the first ever animal expressing a transgene.

The two scientists assigned the patent to the university, which, in turn, licensed the commercial rights to the technology to DNX, Inc., a biotechnology company based in Princeton, NJ.  In return, DNX was required to pay Ohio University royalties on the profits from the use of the technique.