2012 SIVB Lifetime Achievement Award

The highest honor given by the Society for In Vitro Biology is the Lifetime Achievement Award.  It is presented to scientists who are considered pioneers or highly influential researchers to the science and art of cell culture.  They are men and women who have devoted their careers to exemplary research and/or teaching.  The recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award are selected by vote of the Board of Directors from a list of nominations recommended by the Awards Committee.  The Society for In Vitro Biology honored Dr. Wallace McKeehan and Dr. Niels Bols with SIVB Lifetime Achievement Awards at the 2012 World Congress on In Vitro Biology.  This issue highlights Dr. Wallace McKeehan’s career.  Dr. Niels Bols’ career will be highlighted in a future issue of the In Vitro Report.  

Dr. Wallace L. McKeehan

Dr. Wallace L. McKeehan, the John S. Dunn Professor at the Institute for Biotechnology at Texas A and M University, received the 2012 SIVB Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Congress on In Vitro Biology in Bellevue, Washington.

Dr. McKeehan achieved academic excellence and made significant contributions in the areas of cell culture media development, mechanisms of growth factor action, and cancer biology in his 40-year career, and he made significant contributions to the next generation of research scientists by mentoring 23 graduate students, 16 post-doctoral fellows and 16 visiting scientists; many of Dr. McKeehan’s mentees are now in leadership positions in academia and industry.

Dr. McKeehan used experimental in vitro biology techniques to contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms of cell-cell communication in health and disease through cell surface tyrosine kinase receptor signaling controlled by tissue matrix heparan sulfate.  Although applicable to most tissues, these contributions were made at the molecular, cellular and physiological levels with a focus on cardiovascular, liver and prostate biology. In particular,

1. He demonstrated the importance of nutrient balance and trace nutrients and their interaction with hormones and growth factors in serum-free culture of new cell types, and he established the MCDB series of defined culture media with Dick Ham.
2. He isolated novel liver and prostate growth factors using cell culture detection methods, and he developed techniques for isolating normal prostate cells in culture and culturing fastidious prostate tumor cells.
3. He demonstrated that androgen is not a direct growth factor for prostate cells, but is mediated by local tissue polypeptides that mediate communication between stromal and epithelial cell compartments, and he demonstrated stepwise changes within cell compartments in the FGF family that subverted stromal to epithelial communication and homeostatic balance during progression to malignancy.
4. He discovered that the heparan sulfate chains from peri-cellular matrix proteoglycan are an integral part of the FGF tyrosine kinase signal transduction complex, and he demonstrated the relative contributions of the heparan sulfate and FGF receptor kinase subunits on signaling specificity. He found that charged groups are specifically distributed in heparan sulfate oligosaccharides that control FGF signaling, and he isolated the first specific oligosaccharide for FGF signaling.

Dr. McKeehan pioneered and helped document two novel concepts: FGF signaling both mediates steroid hormone and metabolite transcription factor receptor action; and the pericellular matrix heparan sulfate plays an intimate and sometimes oligosaccharide motif-specific role in FGF signaling as a part of the transmembrane receptor complex. He further showed that an important element of prostate cancer is a basic failure of cells in the microenvironment to communicate properly using the FGF receptor tyrosine kinase signaling mechanisms revealing multiple steps in tumor progression that may be potentially reversed by treatment. More recently, Dr. McKeehan demonstrated that a specific FGF tyrosine kinase receptor (FGFR4) controls bile acid synthesis, lipid and glucose metabolism affecting obesity-related fatty liver and diabetes. This contribution was the first to implicate members of the FGF family in control of metabolic homeostasis and endocrine functions.

In his address Dr. McKeehan acknowledged the influence of his scientific mentors including two prior SIVB Lifetime Achievement Awardees Drs. Richard G. Ham and Gordon H. Sato, and he challenged his own students and postdocs to strive for research excellence that might garner future awards.

Submitted by
J. Denry Sato, D.Phil
Tetsuji Okamoto, D.D.S., Ph.D.