Houghten named Entrepreneur in Residence

Richard A. Houghten

Fresno State alumn Richard A. Houghten, founder and president of Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies in San Diego, will be Entrepreneur in Residence at Fresno State from Oct. 14-17.

Houghten is an internationally recognized authority on peptide chemistry and combinatorial chemistry discovery techniques.    He is the author of over 480 articles and holds 60 U.S. patents.   He has been the founder, editor or board member of ten journals; and Principal Investigator on 15 research grants.

He received his B.S. degree in chemistry in 1968 from Fresno State, where, in addition to attending regular courses, he carried out undergraduate research.    After earning M.S. (1970) and Ph.D. (1975) degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, Houghten was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Associate at the Hormone Research Laboratory, University of California at San Francisco; assistant professor of medicine and biochemistry at City University of New York, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine; and assistant member, associate member, and adjunct associate member of the Department of Molecular Biology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla.

Houghten is the inventor of the "T-bag technique," a revolutionary method for quickly synthesizing hundreds to thousands of individual compounds, or millions to billions of compounds in mixture-based formats.   These approaches reduce the time and cost of drug discovery by as much as a hundred-fold. These methods also presaged the later global advances in combinatorial synthesis by at least five years.

In 1986 he founded Multiple Peptide Systems to make available to the research community the cost savings evident in the synthesis of peptides.   In 1988, to provide career growth opportunities to young scientists, he founded and became president of the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, internationally recognized for its seminal scientific contributions in a wide range of fields, including chemistry, Multiple Sclerosis, diabetes, immunology, infectious disease, heart disease, cancer vaccines, pain management and genetics. The institute has grown to include over 80 scientists, technicians and administrative staff, who work in an environment that emphasizes personal and career growth by encouraging the development of independent research ideas as well as the development of collaborative efforts with scientists throughout the world.

Houghten's achievements have been recognized by numerous honors, including the San Diego Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Chemical Society (1996), Advanced ChemTech Combinatorial Library Science Award (1997), Hewlett Packard Award for Outstanding Research in Integrated Analytical Systems (1998), TNO Pharma Award for Outstanding Strategic Combinatorial Technologies (1998), Athena Pinnacle Award for Empowering Women in the Workplace (1999) and the Vincent du Vigneaud Award for Excellence in Peptide Science (2000).