The History Of Umbilical Cord Stem Cell Research
Stem cell research has come a long way in a relatively short amount of time. The appeal of stem cell therapy as one of the most successful and least invasive ways to treat certain forms of cancer has made it very popular among patients with these diseases. New applications for stem cell research are being developed as doctors continue to search for ways to use it to cure more diseases. This article will present the history of stem cell research and how it has evolved to what it is today.
Till and McCulloch: stem cell pioneers
Stem cell research owes its roots to two scientists with very different backgrounds. Dr. James Till's expertise is in biophysics and cell biology and he received his PhD from Yale University in 1957. His partner and co-father of stem cell research , Dr. Ernest McCulloch, on the other hand, received his MD from the University of Ontario in 1948. Dr. McCulloch left to work as a researcher at London 's Lister Institute while Dr. Till finished his postgraduate degree. Eventually the two met at Canada 's newly-formed Ontario Cancer Institute that is based in Princess Margaret Hospital . Though the two scientists were separated by more than nine years in age, they immediately recognized a like-minded individual in the other, and they set off to change the face of the medical world completely.
It was in 1961, in the first few months of their fellowship, that they published their first collaborative work. The paper entitled “A direct measurement of the radiation sensitivity of normal mouse bone marrow cells” was published in Radiation Research , and quickly set Drs. Till and McCulloch on their way to the discovery of stem cells. They observed that radiated mice formed a series of irregular lumps on their spleens when injected with bone marrow cells. The number of bumps was proportional to the number of marrow cells injected into the spleen and these bumps were called “spleen colonies.” At this point, they postulated that it was possible that the “spleen colonies” had arisen from a single kind of cell.
Two years later, joined by graduate assistant Andy Becker, Drs. Till and McCulloch formally published their research on what they called stem cells in the 1963 issue of Nature . After that, the pair collaborated with Dr. Lou Siminovitch to prove that these stem cells were able to renew themselves regularly. This piece of evidence was the last one they needed to cement the definition of stem cells that is used today.
Awards and citations
In the course of their illustrious careers, both Till and McCulloch received numerous awards and distinctions as a result of their groundbreaking research. They received most of the awards jointly and these awards include the Gairdner Foundation International Award and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. This latter award is commonly known as the precursor to winning the Nobel Prize for Medicine as over 50 percent of its recipients have gone on to win the Nobel. They were both fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Society of London, and served as officers of the Order of Canada . The Canadian government established their place in history by enshrining them forever in the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.