SIVB Lifetime Achievement Award

he 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. David Barnes and Dr. Michael Kane with SIVB Lifetime Achievement Awards at the 2014 World Forum on Biology Meeting. This issue highlights Dr. David Barnes’ career. Dr. Michael Kane’s career will be highlighted in a future issue of the In Vitro Report.

David W. Barnes, PhD

Dr. David W. Barnes was one of two recipients of the 2014 SIVB Lifetime Achievement Award during the opening ceremony of the 2014 World Forum on Biology in Savannah, GA. During his scientific career, Dr. Barnes has made significant contributions to in vitro biology in several different research fields including cancer biology, parasitology, teleost physiology and stem cell biology. His contributions centered on the development of culture media and techniques that allowed the isolation and characterization of cell lines that were previously difficult or impossible to grow. But from a broader perspective these contributions led to the expansion of knowledge in fields that were limited by technology and lack of research resources.

Dr. Barnes began his research career as a graduate student with Dr. Sidney Colowick in the Department of Microbiology at Vanderbilt University and as a post doc with Dr. Gordon Sato in the Biology Department at UC San Diego. In those positions he worked on elucidating the function of growth factors and hormones in mammalian cell growth. He determined that EGF induced glucose uptake while stimulating 3T3 fibroblast proliferation (Barnes and Colowick, 1977), and he developed the first hormonally-defined serum-free medium that supported the proliferation of a human breast cancer cell line (Barnes and Sato, 1979). Barnes and Sato also wrote two influential reviews of serum-free cell culture (1980a, 1980b) that greatly stimulated research activity in the field for the next decade.

As an independent scientist, Dr. Barnes purified and studied the function of serum spreading factor (vitronectin) (Barnes and Silnutzer, 1983), which is an important extracellular matrix adhesion factor that promotes mammalian cell survival and proliferation in culture. Subsequently, Dr. Barnes isolated an EGF-dependent normal mouse embryo cell line in serum-free medium that proliferated indefinitely while maintaining a normal karyotype (Loo, et al., 1987). These cells were later shown to be neural stem cells (Sakai, et al., 1990), and this work helped propel the expansion of adult and embryonic stem cell research. In another significant contribution to stem cell research Dr. Barnes received an NIH grant to set up the first embryonic stem cell bank (The National Stem Cell Resource) at the American Type Culture Collection in 2000.

Dr. Barnes moved on to develop media and techniques to establish cell lines from invertebrates and teleosts adapting lessons learned from culturing mammalian cells. In an important step forward, he found that fish embryo extracts promoted the survival and out growth of fish cells from embryos and adult tissues (Collodi and Barnes, 1990), which allowed the establishment of the first zebrafish cell lines (Collodi, et al., 1992). These and similar lines have been very useful in toxicological studies as zebrafish have become a model species in the field of environmental health (Miranda, et al., 1993). Barnes and his colleagues were the first to culture cells from Shistosoma mansoni, a human parasite that has a socioeconomic impact second only to malaria in the developing world (Bayne, et al., 1994; Ivanchenko, et al., 1999). More recently, the Barnes lab has isolated the first cell lines from cartilagenous fish, sharks and skates, which have remained unchanged for over 400 million years (Parton et al., 2007). These cell lines have allowed investigations into the comparative physiology and molecular biology of distantly related vertebrate species (Forest, et al., 2007; Kobayashi, et al., 2007).

In addition to making these significant contributions to in vitro biology, Dr. Barnes has mentored many graduate students and post docs, and he has actively promoted scientific exchange between Japanese and American scientists. He has also served the research community by serving on numerous advisory committees and journal editorial boards. He was an Associate Editor of In Vitro Cellular and Developmental Biology – Animal from 1985 to 1988, and he rejoined the editorial board as an Associate Editor in 2011.

Submitted by J. Denry Sato, Tetsuji Okamoto and Shirahata Sanetaka

References

Barnes, D.W. and Colowick, S.P., l977, Stimulation of sugar uptake and thymidine incorporation in 3T3 cells by calcium phosphate and other extracellular particu¬lates. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., USA, 74, 5593 5597.
Barnes, D.W. and Sato, G.H., 1979, Growth of a human breast cancer cell line in serum free medium. Nature, 281, 388 389.
Barnes, D.W. and Sato, G.H., 1980a, Serum free cell culture: a unifying approach. Cell, 2, 649 655.
Barnes, D. and Sato, G., 1980b, Methods for growth of cultured cells in serum free medium. Anal. Biochem., 102, 255 270.
Barnes, D. and Silnutzer, J., l983, Isolation of human serum spreading factor. J. Biol. Chem. 258, 12548-12552.
Loo, D.T., Fuquay, J.I., Rawson, C.L. and Barnes, D.W., 1987, Extended culture of mouse embryo cells without senescence: inhibition by serum. Science 236, 200-202.
Collodi, P. and Barnes, D., 1990, Mitogenic activity from trout embryos. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., USA 87. 3498-3502.
Sakai, Y., Rawson, C., Lindburg, K. and Barnes, D., 1990, Serum and transforming growth factor beta regulate glial fibrillary acidic protein in serum free-derived mouse embryo cells. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 87, 8378-8382.
Collodi, P., Kamei, Y., Ernst, T., Miranda, C. Buhler, D. and Barnes, D. 1992, Culture of cells from zebrafish (Brachydanio rerio) embryo and adult tissues. Cell Biol. and Toxicol. 8, 43-61.
Miranda, C. L, Collodi, P., Zhao, X., Barnes, D. and Buhler, D. R., 1993. Regulation of cytochrome P450 expression in a novel liver cell line from zebrafish. Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 305, 320-327.
Bayne, C. J. Menino, J. S., Hobbs, D. J., and Barnes, D. W. 1994. In vitro cultivation of cells from larval Schistosoma mansoni. J. Parasitol., 80. 29-35.
Bradford, C., Nishiyama, K., Shirahata, S. and Barnes, D., 1997, Characterization of cell cultures derived from Fugu, the Japanese pufferfish. Mol. Marine Biol. and Biotech., 6, 270-288.
Ivanchenko, M.G. Lerner, J. P., McCormick, R.S., Toumadje, A., Allen, B., Fischer, K., Hedstrom, O., Barnes, D. W. and Bayne, C.J., 1999, Continuous in vitro propagation of the intra-molluscan stages of the human parasite Schistosoma mansoni. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 96, 4965-4970.
Parton, A., Forest, D., Kobayashi, H., Dowell, L.M., Bayne, C.J. and Barnes, D., 2007, Cell and molecular biology of SAE, a cell line from the spiny dogfish shark, Squalus acanthias. Comp. Biochem. Physiol., 145, 111-119.
Forest, D., Nishikawa, R., Kobayashi, H., Parton, A., Bayne, C.J. and Barnes, D.W., 2007, RNA expression in a cartilaginous fish cell line reveals ancient 3’ noncoding regions highly conserved in vertebrates. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 104, 1224-1229.
Kobayashi, H., Parton, A., Czechanski, A., Durkin, C., Kong, J. and Barnes, D.W., 2007 Multidrug.-resistance-associated protein 3 (Mrp3/Abcc3/Moat-D) is expressed in the SAE Squalus acanthias shark embryo-derived cell line. Zebrafish, 4, 261-275.