History Flashcards
In 1912, the Nobel Prize winning French scientist Alexis Carrel published a paper in The Journal of Experimental Medicine entitled “On the Permanent Life of Tissues Outside of the Organism” which purported that cells grown in the lab would indefinitely replicate under the proper conditions. Although no one could repeat his experiment it was assumed it was the fault of the scientists. When and how was it determined that Carrel’s conclusion was false?
In the 1960’s, a Scientist named Leonard Hayflick gave a lecture in which he proposed (based on his own experiments) that Carrel’s method was flawed in that the fluid extract being used to feed the cells daily contained errant fresh cells which caused the culture to stay alive for decades. A woman who had worked as a technician for Carrel in the 1930’s approached Hayflick after his lecture and told him he was right. In the 1930’s she had raised questions with Carrel’s chief technician indicating this exact thing might be happening. She had been told to forget what she was seeing or risk losing her job. This new understanding of cell life would become known as The Hayflick Limit. And his paper would be rejected by the prestigious journal that had earlier published Carrell’s paper. But it would be excepted by the less prestigious journal Experimental Cell Research.
Prior to the use of human fetal diploid cells as the growing medium for vaccines, what type of cells were used and why were human fetal diploid cells explored as an alternative?
Monkey kidney cells were originally and still are used to some extent in vaccines today. Human fetal diploid cells are used as an alternative now due to the costly process of obtaining monkey kidney cells as well as their susceptibility to occasional infection/contamination
What was the title of Leonard Hayflick’s paper that was published in 1961 that announced his discovery of the Hayflick Limit and his cultivation of his fist normal 25 fetal cell strains?
“The Serial Cultivation of Human Diploid Cell Strains”
