Local gene research company TransGenRx has landed a $30 million deal to produce human growth hormone for an Argentinean pharmaceutical company.TGRx — founded in 2002 with technology developed at the LSU AgCenter — alters and produces genes which are used for pharmaceutical products to treat diseases.TGRx will produce human growth hormone and sell it to the Argentinean company, which will prepare it for use in generic medicines.”We’re making intermediate growth hormone products which will be put through a chemical reaction to make it active,” said Richard Cooper, TGRx exectuive vice president of research and development and University veterinary science professor. “[The pharmaceutical company] will purify it and make a generic.”Cooper is the chief developer of the technology used by TGRx. The company was spawned from research conducted at the AgCenter, which Cooper saw as an opportunity to make a product for profit, said Fred Enright, chair of the veterinary science department. “We were trying to make fish disease resistant,” Enright said. “There’s no market for that because the USDA won’t let you put transgenic fish back into a pond … Dr. Cooper spun that off into a company that makes a product.”To use the technology, TGRx had to license it from the AgCenter, said Wade Baumgartner, assistant director of the AgCenter intellectual property office. Because of the license, the University is paid a 5 percent royalty fee from the business transactions of TGRx, Baumgartner said, which means the University stands to make $1.5 million from TGRx’s $30 million deal.Though TGRx is an independent company, it still has close ties with the University. TGRx’s labs are mostly populated with University graduates and current students.”We’ve got in the neighborhood of 15 part-time employees, and nearly all of them are LSU students,” Cooper said. “Probably half of our [full-time] employees have an undergraduate, master’s or PhD from LSU.”TGRx’s role as a commercial company using University-developed technology exemplifies what research Universities strive for, Enright said.”One of the prime things that’s supposed to happen from a University’s point of view is to be able to move technology from the University to the real world, so it benefits in a financial way the economy of the state and region,” Enright said.Cooper said the presence of TGRx as a commercial company and student training facility will have a strong economic impact on Baton Rouge.____Contact Ryan Buxton at [email protected]