Leonard Hayflick

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Leonard Hayflick (born May 20, 1928 in Philadelphia ) is an American gerontologist . He was best known for his work in the field of cell division , in which he showed that normal body cells can only divide about fifty times and then die through programmed cell death ( apoptosis ). He thus refuted the thesis put forward by Alexis Carrel in 1908 that vertebrate cells can divide indefinitely and are immortal .

Life

Leonard Hayflick received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1956 . He then did a post-doc with Charles M. Pomerant at the University of Texas at Galveston . He then returned to Philadelphia, where he was an associate member of the Wistar Institute for ten years . He then got an assistant professorship there. In 1968 he was appointed professor of medical microbiology at Stanford University . In 1982 he accepted an appointment from the University of Florida at Gainesville , where he became Director of the Center for Gerontological Studies and Professor of Zoology at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences , and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the College of Medicine .

In 1988 Hayflick went to the University of California, San Francisco . Here he was last professor of anatomy .

Leonard Hayflick is a member of a large number of national and international bodies and committees. He founded the Gerontological Society of America ( Gerontological Society of America ), and was a founding member of the National Institute on Aging . Hayflick has received a variety of honors and written over 275 academic papers. Some of his articles are among the most cited in the field of biomedicine.

Research work

In 1961, Hayflick and his colleague Paul Moorhead discovered that normal, cultivated human and animal cells cannot divide indefinitely, but rather die after a certain number of cell divisions (approx. 50). This limit is in honor of the discoverer today Hayflick Limit (Engl. Hayflick limit called). Hayflick was the first to succeed in cultivating normal human diploid cells. Up to this point in time, all cell cultures were aneuploid and able to divide indefinitely. One of the cell lines (human fetal lung fibroblasts ) from Hayflick's and Moorhead's work at that time is called WI-38 (Wistar Institute). These and derived cell lines have meanwhile been used billions of times for the production of human vaccines .

Publications (selection)

Books

items

  • Entropy explains aging, genetic determinism explains longevity, and undefined terminology explains misunderstanding both. In: PLoS Genetics , 3/2007, e220, PMID 18085826
  • Biological aging is no longer an unsolved problem. In: Ann NY Acad Sci 1100/2007, pp. 1-10. PMID 17460161
  • `` Anti-Aging '' is an oxymoron In: J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 59/2004, pp. B573-B578. PMID 15215267
  • The future of aging. In: Nature 408/2000, pp. 37-39. PMID 11089985
  • The illusion of cell immortality. In: Br J Cancer 83/2000, pp. 841-846. PMID 10970682
  • Cell aging. In: Ann. Rev. Geront. Geriatric. 1, 1980, pp. 26-67.
  • Future directions in aging research. In: Proc Soc Exp Biol Med 165/1980, pp. 206-214. PMID 7443710
  • Future directions in aging research. In: Basic Life Sci 35/1985, pp. 447-460. PMID 4062823
  • The one billion dollar misunderstanding. In: Contemp Gerontol 10/2003; 10: 65-69.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hayflick, L. & Moorhead, PS (1961): The serial cultivation of human diploid cell strains. In: Exp. Cell Res. 25: 585-621. PMID 13905658 doi : 10.1016 / 0014-4827 (61) 90192-6
  2. ↑ E. Kleideiter: Telomere and Telomerase - their importance as prognostic tumor markers and their potential for pharmacological interventions. Dissertation, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, 2003. PDF
personal data
SURNAME Hayflick, Leonard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American gerontologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia