But Odenville is home to Brown Family Enterprises (BFE) and as such, is home to an important link between many a researcher's theory and the reality of a palliative or cure. A family-run farm business, BFE supplies an array of host animals, including rabbits, goats, sheep and chickens, to the medical research community.
Matthew Brown, PhD, a cardiovascular disease researcher and medical school instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, started BFE 12 years ago as a part-time venture. It has now grown from an initial investment of a few hundred dollars to the point that he's considering making it a fulltime career.
BFE's highest volume of business, said Brown, is in rabbits. Not only are they genetically closer to humans than rats and mice but a rabbit's size makes many procedures easier to perform.
"Lots of cardiac procedures have to be tested in animals that weigh as much as a human, so sheep are often used for those," Brown said. "And goats are often used for orthopedic studies because their joint structure is sufficiently similar to humans. But rabbits are used for all sorts of things."
To keep up with the demand, BFE maintains a sizable rabbit population that includes New Zealand whites, the smaller Dutch belted variety and the cholesterol-ridden Watanabe Heritable Hyperlipidemia (WHHL) rabbits, ideal for testing statin drugs.
"They have a rare defect in their LDL receptors that prevent them from clearing LDL cholesterol," Brown explained. "Their levels can be up to five times the highest cholesterol levels in humans."
As a favor to a colleague, Brown agreed to give WHHL breeding a try. But he soon learned that the newcomers were a couple of sickly seniors with fertility issues. Only after a few generations of crossbreeding was Brown able to produce a viable colony "from those two old foot-in-the-grave rabbits." BFE is now the only breeder of WHHLs in the country.
BFE's facilities basically consist of two large barns and 200 cages. The industry, Brown said, is strictly regulated and the rabbit areas, in particular, have to be kept spotless. The facility is USDA licensed and inspected, and the animals receive proper veterinary care.
"We have to maintain a very high standard," Brown said.
As evidence of his rising prominence in the field of animal research, the NIH recently contacted Brown with a request that he house some rare transgenic rabbits. These type rabbits, he explained, have a human gene introduced during the embryo stage and are frequently used in heart — and cholesterol-related studies.
Brown's interest in research animals began over two decades ago when he was 17 and worked at a research farm. "Not many 38 year olds have 20 years of experience," he noted.
In addition to breeding and maintaining the animals, BFE produces custom polyclonal antibodies to meet a researcher's particular needs. The company also supplies frozen and freshly collected animal blood products and tissues. Samples are collected and processed at an onsite laboratory.
While Brown deals with BFE's research-related matters and clients, wife Catherine, a nurse practitioner, handles the finances, deals with regulatory matters and otherwise manages the mountain of paperwork produced by the business. Their children, Annie Lura, age ten, and Jameson, eight, also pitch in wherever they can. Working alongside their parents, the two homeschoolers are gaining life lessons they'd never receive in a traditional classroom.
"They're growing up in the business and learning it firsthand," their proud dad said.
The family involvement extends even into a third generation with Brown's parents, James and Paula Brown, directing the farm's day-to-day operations.
"We have no employees," Brown said. "It truly is a family business."
June 2007
