Leonard Hayflick
Encyclopedia
Leonard Hayflick Ph.D.
, is Professor of Anatomy
at the University of California
, San Francisco, School of Medicine
, and was Professor of Medical Microbiology
at Stanford University
School of Medicine. He is a past president of the Gerontological Society of America and was a founding member of the council of the National Institute on Aging
(NIA). The recipient of several research prizes and awards, including the 1991 Sandoz Prize for Gerontological Research, he has studied the aging process
for more than thirty years. He is known for discovering that human cell
s divide for a limited number of times in vitro (refuting the contention by Alexis Carrel
that normal body cells are immortal
). This is known as the Hayflick limit
.
Hayflick is the author of the book, “How and Why We Age”, published in August 1994 by Ballantine Books, NYC and available in 1996 as a paperback. This book has been translated into nine languages and is published in Japan, Brazil, Russia, Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Israel and Hungary. It was a selection of The Book of the Month Club and has sold over 50,000 copies worldwide.
Hayflick and his associates have vehemently condemned "anti-aging medicine" and criticized organizations such as the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine
. Hayflick has written numerous articles criticizing both the feasibility and desirability of human life extension
, which have provoked responses critical of his views.
in 1956. After receiving a post-doctoral Fellowship for study at the University of Texas, Galveston, under the tutelage of the renowned cell culturist Prof. Charles M. Pomerat, he returned to Philadelphia, where he spent ten years as an Associate Member of the Wistar Institute and two years as an Assistant Professor of Research Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1968 Hayflick was appointed Professor of Medical Microbiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California. In 1982 he moved to the University of Florida, Gainesville, where he became Director of the Center for Gerontological Studies and Professor of Zoology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology in the College of Medicine.
In 1988 Hayflick joined the faculty of the University of California, San Francisco where he is presently Professor of Anatomy. Hayflick is a member of numerous national and international scientific and public boards of directors and committees. He is now, or has been, on the Editorial Boards of more than ten professional journals. Hayflick was Editor-in-Chief of the international journal “Experimental Gerontology” for 13 years.
He is a member of twenty scientific and professional societies in which he has held several high offices including President of the Gerontological Society of America from 1982 to 1983. He was a founding member of the Council of the National Institute on Aging, NIH and Chairman of its Executive Committee. He was a consultant to the National Cancer Institute and the World Health Organization
, and is now a member of several scientific advisory boards. He was Chairman of the Scientific Review Board of the American Federation for Aging Research where he was also a vice president and a Member of the Board of Directors.
Hayflick is also one of several prominent biologists featured in the 1995 science documentary
Death by Design/The Life and Times of Life and Times
.
, virus vaccine development, and mycoplasmology. In 1962 he discovered that, contrary to the belief prevalent at the turn of the century, cultured normal human and animal cells have a limited capacity for replication. This discovery, known as the Hayflick limit
, overturned a dogma that existed since Alexis Carrel
's work early in this century that claimed that normal cells would proliferate continuously in culture. Hayflick's results focused attention on the finite cellular life-span was the fundamental location of age changes and that immortality was a key feature of tumor cells. Hayflick demonstrated for the first time that mortal (normal) and immortal (malignant) mammalian cells existed.
Hayflick developed the first normal human diploid cell strains for studies on human aging and for research use throughout the world. Before his seminal research all cultured cell lines were immortal and aneuploid. One such cell strain, developed by Hayflick and his colleague Paul Moorehead at the Wistar Institute
in Philadelphia, called WI-38, was the most widely used and highly characterized normal human cell population in the world. Hayflick produced the first oral polio vaccine made on a continuously propagated cell strain. WI-38 is now used for the production of all of the Rubella Virus vaccine used in the Western Hemisphere. WI-38, or new diploid cell strains, is used today for the manufacture of most human virus vaccine
s produced throughout the world including those for poliomyelitis
, rubella, rubeola, varicella, mumps, rabies, adenoviruses and hepatitis A. Over one billion vaccinees have received vaccines produced on WI-38 or foreign version of Hayflick's original WI-38.
Hayflick is also known for his discovery of the cause of primary atypical pneumonia (“walking pneumonia”) in humans. The etiological agent was first thought to be a virus, but Hayflick showed that it was, in fact, a mycoplasma
, a member of the smallest free-living class of microorganisms. The etiological agent was named by him as Mycoplasma pneumoniae, and was first grown by Hayflick on a medium he developed and that bears his name. It is now used world wide for mycoplasma isolation and research.
Hayflick is the recipient of more than twenty-five major awards including the $20,000 Brookdale Award and the Kleemeier Award from the Gerontological Society of America, the Biomedical Sciences and Aging Award from the University of Southern California, The Karl August Forster Lectureship of the Academy of Sciences and Literature and the University of Mainz, Germany, the Samuel Roberts Nobel Foundation Research Recognition Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society for In Vitro Biology, the Sandoz Prize from the International Association of Gerontology, and the Presidential Award from the International Organization of Mycoplasmology.
In 1997, Hayflick was elected Academician and Foreign Member of the Ukrainian Academy of Medical Sciences. In 1998 he was elected corresponding member of the Société de Biologie of France. In 1999, he was presented with the van Weezel Award by the European Society for Animal Cell Technology and the Lord Cohen of Birkenhead Medal
by the British Society for Research on Aging. In 1997 the American Aging Association
established an Annual Hayflick Lectureship. In 2000 a second Annual Hayflick Lecture also was established by the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Hayflick is the recipient of the year 2001, $10,000 Life Extension Prize and Laureate Diploma from the Regenerative Medicine Secretariat for his "..discovery of the finite replicative capacity of normal human diploid cells.."
Hayflick is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an Honorary Member of the Tissue Culture Association and, according to the Institute of Scientific Information, is one of the most cited contemporary scientists in the world in the fields of biochemistry, biophysics, cell biology, enzymology, genetics and molecular biology. Hayflick is the author of over 275 scientific papers, book chapters and edited books of which four papers are among the 100 most cited scientific papers of the two million papers published in the basic biomedical sciences from 1961 to 1978.
The inverted microscope that Hayflick modified for use in of his tissue culture and mycoplasma work and on which all other such microscopes have been modeled has been acquired by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
, is Professor of Anatomy
Anatomy
Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...
at the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
, San Francisco, School of Medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, and was Professor of Medical Microbiology
Microbiology
Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, which are defined as any microscopic organism that comprises either a single cell , cell clusters or no cell at all . This includes eukaryotes, such as fungi and protists, and prokaryotes...
at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
School of Medicine. He is a past president of the Gerontological Society of America and was a founding member of the council of the National Institute on Aging
National Institute on Aging
The National Institute on Aging ' is a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health , located in Baltimore, Maryland.The NIA leads a broad scientific effort to understand the nature of aging and to extend the healthy, active years of life...
(NIA). The recipient of several research prizes and awards, including the 1991 Sandoz Prize for Gerontological Research, he has studied the aging process
Senescence
Senescence or biological aging is the change in the biology of an organism as it ages after its maturity. Such changes range from those affecting its cells and their function to those affecting the whole organism...
for more than thirty years. He is known for discovering that human cell
Cell (biology)
The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of life that is classified as a living thing, and is often called the building block of life. The Alberts text discusses how the "cellular building blocks" move to shape developing embryos....
s divide for a limited number of times in vitro (refuting the contention by Alexis Carrel
Alexis Carrel
Alexis Carrel was a French surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation...
that normal body cells are immortal
Biological immortality
Biological immortality refers to a stable rate of mortality as a function of chronological age. Some individual cells and entire organisms in some species achieve this state either throughout their existence or after living long enough. This requires that death occur from injury or disease rather...
). This is known as the Hayflick limit
Hayflick limit
The Hayflick limit is the number of times a normal cell population will divide before it stops, presumably because the telomeres reach a critical length....
.
Hayflick is the author of the book, “How and Why We Age”, published in August 1994 by Ballantine Books, NYC and available in 1996 as a paperback. This book has been translated into nine languages and is published in Japan, Brazil, Russia, Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Israel and Hungary. It was a selection of The Book of the Month Club and has sold over 50,000 copies worldwide.
Hayflick and his associates have vehemently condemned "anti-aging medicine" and criticized organizations such as the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine
American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine
The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine is a United States registered 501 nonprofit organization that promotes the field of anti-aging medicine and trains and certifies physicians in this specialty. As of 2011, approximately 26,000 practitioners had been given certificates...
. Hayflick has written numerous articles criticizing both the feasibility and desirability of human life extension
Life extension
Life extension science, also known as anti-aging medicine, experimental gerontology, and biomedical gerontology, is the study of slowing down or reversing the processes of aging to extend both the maximum and average lifespan...
, which have provoked responses critical of his views.
Background
Leonard Hayflick was born May 20, 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. at the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
in 1956. After receiving a post-doctoral Fellowship for study at the University of Texas, Galveston, under the tutelage of the renowned cell culturist Prof. Charles M. Pomerat, he returned to Philadelphia, where he spent ten years as an Associate Member of the Wistar Institute and two years as an Assistant Professor of Research Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1968 Hayflick was appointed Professor of Medical Microbiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California. In 1982 he moved to the University of Florida, Gainesville, where he became Director of the Center for Gerontological Studies and Professor of Zoology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology in the College of Medicine.
In 1988 Hayflick joined the faculty of the University of California, San Francisco where he is presently Professor of Anatomy. Hayflick is a member of numerous national and international scientific and public boards of directors and committees. He is now, or has been, on the Editorial Boards of more than ten professional journals. Hayflick was Editor-in-Chief of the international journal “Experimental Gerontology” for 13 years.
He is a member of twenty scientific and professional societies in which he has held several high offices including President of the Gerontological Society of America from 1982 to 1983. He was a founding member of the Council of the National Institute on Aging, NIH and Chairman of its Executive Committee. He was a consultant to the National Cancer Institute and the World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
, and is now a member of several scientific advisory boards. He was Chairman of the Scientific Review Board of the American Federation for Aging Research where he was also a vice president and a Member of the Board of Directors.
Hayflick is also one of several prominent biologists featured in the 1995 science documentary
Documentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
Death by Design/The Life and Times of Life and Times
Death by Design/The Life and Times of Life and Times
Death by Design/The Life and Times of Life of Times is a science documentary directed by Peter Friedman which focuses on cytology, i.e. the study of cells, with an emphasis on cell death and aging...
.
Research details
Hayflick is known for his research in cell biologyCell biology
Cell biology is a scientific discipline that studies cells – their physiological properties, their structure, the organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their life cycle, division and death. This is done both on a microscopic and molecular level...
, virus vaccine development, and mycoplasmology. In 1962 he discovered that, contrary to the belief prevalent at the turn of the century, cultured normal human and animal cells have a limited capacity for replication. This discovery, known as the Hayflick limit
Hayflick limit
The Hayflick limit is the number of times a normal cell population will divide before it stops, presumably because the telomeres reach a critical length....
, overturned a dogma that existed since Alexis Carrel
Alexis Carrel
Alexis Carrel was a French surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation...
's work early in this century that claimed that normal cells would proliferate continuously in culture. Hayflick's results focused attention on the finite cellular life-span was the fundamental location of age changes and that immortality was a key feature of tumor cells. Hayflick demonstrated for the first time that mortal (normal) and immortal (malignant) mammalian cells existed.
Hayflick developed the first normal human diploid cell strains for studies on human aging and for research use throughout the world. Before his seminal research all cultured cell lines were immortal and aneuploid. One such cell strain, developed by Hayflick and his colleague Paul Moorehead at the Wistar Institute
Wistar Institute
The Wistar Institute is a biomedical center, with a focus on cancer research and vaccine development. It is located in the University City section of Philadelphia, Pa...
in Philadelphia, called WI-38, was the most widely used and highly characterized normal human cell population in the world. Hayflick produced the first oral polio vaccine made on a continuously propagated cell strain. WI-38 is now used for the production of all of the Rubella Virus vaccine used in the Western Hemisphere. WI-38, or new diploid cell strains, is used today for the manufacture of most human virus vaccine
Vaccine
A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe or its toxins...
s produced throughout the world including those for poliomyelitis
Poliomyelitis
Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute viral infectious disease spread from person to person, primarily via the fecal-oral route...
, rubella, rubeola, varicella, mumps, rabies, adenoviruses and hepatitis A. Over one billion vaccinees have received vaccines produced on WI-38 or foreign version of Hayflick's original WI-38.
Hayflick is also known for his discovery of the cause of primary atypical pneumonia (“walking pneumonia”) in humans. The etiological agent was first thought to be a virus, but Hayflick showed that it was, in fact, a mycoplasma
Mycoplasma
Mycoplasma refers to a genus of bacteria that lack a cell wall. Without a cell wall, they are unaffected by many common antibiotics such as penicillin or other beta-lactam antibiotics that target cell wall synthesis. They can be parasitic or saprotrophic. Several species are pathogenic in humans,...
, a member of the smallest free-living class of microorganisms. The etiological agent was named by him as Mycoplasma pneumoniae, and was first grown by Hayflick on a medium he developed and that bears his name. It is now used world wide for mycoplasma isolation and research.
Hayflick is the recipient of more than twenty-five major awards including the $20,000 Brookdale Award and the Kleemeier Award from the Gerontological Society of America, the Biomedical Sciences and Aging Award from the University of Southern California, The Karl August Forster Lectureship of the Academy of Sciences and Literature and the University of Mainz, Germany, the Samuel Roberts Nobel Foundation Research Recognition Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society for In Vitro Biology, the Sandoz Prize from the International Association of Gerontology, and the Presidential Award from the International Organization of Mycoplasmology.
In 1997, Hayflick was elected Academician and Foreign Member of the Ukrainian Academy of Medical Sciences. In 1998 he was elected corresponding member of the Société de Biologie of France. In 1999, he was presented with the van Weezel Award by the European Society for Animal Cell Technology and the Lord Cohen of Birkenhead Medal
Lord Cohen Medal
The Lord Cohen Medal is a British medical award honouring individuals who "have made a considerable contribution to ageing research, either through original discoveries or in the promotion of the subject of gerontology in its broadest aspect"...
by the British Society for Research on Aging. In 1997 the American Aging Association
American Aging Association
The American Aging Association is a non-profit, tax-exempt biogerontology organization of scientists and laypeople dedicated to biomedical aging studies intended to slow the aging process. The abbreviation AGE is intended to be representative of the organization, even though it is not an acronym...
established an Annual Hayflick Lectureship. In 2000 a second Annual Hayflick Lecture also was established by the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Hayflick is the recipient of the year 2001, $10,000 Life Extension Prize and Laureate Diploma from the Regenerative Medicine Secretariat for his "..discovery of the finite replicative capacity of normal human diploid cells.."
Hayflick is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an Honorary Member of the Tissue Culture Association and, according to the Institute of Scientific Information, is one of the most cited contemporary scientists in the world in the fields of biochemistry, biophysics, cell biology, enzymology, genetics and molecular biology. Hayflick is the author of over 275 scientific papers, book chapters and edited books of which four papers are among the 100 most cited scientific papers of the two million papers published in the basic biomedical sciences from 1961 to 1978.
The inverted microscope that Hayflick modified for use in of his tissue culture and mycoplasma work and on which all other such microscopes have been modeled has been acquired by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.