“City of Hope convinced me that if my donations were made public, I could encourage others to follow suit,” he told The Los Angeles Business Journal.
dr. Riggs later developed the basis for monoclonal antibodies, again using recombinant DNA technology to trick bacteria into producing proteins that mimic human antibodies. This development has led to major advances in the treatment of cancer and other diseases.
In the 2000s, he turned to the issue of epigenetics, the study of how markers attached to a gene change the way that gene is “read.” Over the course of an organism’s life, a gene will gain or lose certain markers, a process influenced by behavior and changes in the environment.
Epigenetics is an emerging and still poorly understood field. But even after his retirement in October 2020, Dr. Riggs continued his research, believing it would lead to even more life-saving breakthroughs.
“I could have retired to a mansion in the South Pacific and enjoyed myself on the beach,” he said in 2021, “but I’d be bored in a week.”
Arthur Dale Riggs was born on August 8, 1939 in Modesto, California, where his family owned a ranch.
After they lost 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 sufficiently adept at engineering to design the park’s electrical and plumbing systems himself; in his spare time he built autogyros, which combine elements of an airplane and a helicopter.
Arthur’s mother, Nelly (Calkins) Riggs, a nurse, stimulated her son’s early interest in science, buying him a chemistry set when he was young and taking it to the library, where he spent hours reading science fiction.
