Austin Smith (biologist)
Austin Gerard Smith (* 1960 in Merseyside ) is a British biochemist and stem cell researcher .
Smith studied at Oxford and received his PhD from Edinburgh University in 1986 with Martin Hooper. His work on stem cell research began in his dissertation. He was a post-doctoral student at Oxford University before becoming a group leader at the Center for Genome Research in Edinburgh in 1996. This became the Institute for Stem Cell Research, which he led as director. In 2006 he went to Cambridge University . He is Director of the Wellcome Trust / MRC Stem Cell Institute at Cambridge University and Medical Research Council (MRC) Professor.
He is considered a pioneer of stem cell research and researched the mechanism of pluripotency in embryonic stem cells. According to Smith, there is a pluripotent basic state of the cell, in which the cell depends relatively little on the neighboring cells for its growth and survival, but which reacts very sensitively to external disturbances that lead to differentiation processes (caused by cascades of Erk kinases).
In 1986 he succeeded in multiplying undifferentiated pluripotent stem cells in vitro through the presence of a differentiation-inhibiting factor which he initially called DIA (differentiation inhibiting activity) and identified in 1988 with leukemia- inhibiting factor (LIF). Later he was able to determine the effect of LIF (release of various transcription factors) more precisely and develop more specific inhibitors.
In 2010, he saw the main areas of application for pluripotent stem cells in the next decade in disease modeling, toxicological screening and drug development, and in stem cell therapy the best prospects for eye diseases (age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosum) after it was discovered in 2008 that human embryonic stem cells differentiate relatively efficiently into retinal cells.
In 2010 he received the Louis Jeantet Prize .
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2003) and the Royal Society (2006) and a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization . In 2010 he was accepted as a full member of the Academia Europaea . In 2010 he received the Louis Jeantet Prize , the Pfizer Prize in 2000 and the ISSCR McEwen Award for innovation in 2016.
In 2013, together with other scientists, he criticized the review process in stem cell research in an open letter and suggested making it more transparent.
Fonts (selection)
- A. Smith, Pluripotent stem cells: private obsession and public expectation. In: EMBO molecular medicine. Volume 2, number 4, April 2010, pp. 113–116, doi : 10.1002 / emmm.201000065 , PMID 20373283 , PMC 3377278 (free full text).
- Smith AG: Embryo-derived stem cells: of mice and men. In: Annual review of cell and developmental biology. Volume 17, 2001, pp. 435-462, doi : 10.1146 / annurev.cellbio.17.1.435 , PMID 11687496 (review).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ J. Silva, A. Smith, Capturing pluripotency, Cell, Volume 132, 2008, pp. 532-536
- ↑ Kunath, Smith et al. a., FGF stimulation of the Erk1 / 2 signaling cascade triggers transition of pluripotent embryonic stem cells from self-renewal to lineage commitment, Development, Volume 134, 2007, pp. 2895-2902
- ↑ Hooper, Smith, Buffalo rat liver cells produce a diffusible activity which inhibits the differentiation of murine embryonal carcinoma and embryonic stem cells, Dev. Biol., Vol. 121, 1987, pp. 1-9, PMID 3569655
- ↑ Smith et al. a., Inhibition of pluripotential embryonic stem cell differentiation by purified polypeptides, Nature, Volume 336, 1988, pp. 688-690, PMID 3143917
- ↑ Smith, EMBO Molecular Medicine, Volume 2, 2010, pp. 213-216
- ↑ Acknowledgment at the Louis Jeantet Prize , French
- ↑ Open letter to Senior Editors of peer-review journals publishing in the field of stem cell biology, EuroStemCell
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Smith, Austin |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Smith, Austin Gerard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British biochemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1960 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Merseyside |