Research Details
Hayflick is known for his research in cell biology, virus vaccine development, and mycoplasmology. In 1962 he discovered that, contrary to the belief prevalent at the turn of the century, cultured normal human and animal cells have a limited capacity for replication. This discovery, known as the Hayflick limit, overturned a dogma that existed since Alexis Carrel's work early in this century that claimed that normal cells would proliferate continuously in culture. Hayflick's results focused attention on the finite cellular life-span was the fundamental location of age changes and that immortality was a key feature of tumor cells. Hayflick demonstrated for the first time that mortal (normal) and immortal (malignant) mammalian cells existed.
Hayflick developed the first normal human diploid cell strains for studies on human aging and for research use throughout the world. Before his seminal research all cultured cell lines were immortal and aneuploid. One such cell strain, developed by Hayflick and his colleague Paul Moorehead at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, called WI-38, was the most widely used and highly characterized normal human cell population in the world. Hayflick produced the first oral polio vaccine made on a continuously propagated cell strain. WI-38 is now used for the production of all of the Rubella Virus vaccine used in the Western Hemisphere. WI-38, or new diploid cell strains, is used today for the manufacture of most human virus vaccines produced throughout the world including those for poliomyelitis, rubella, rubeola, varicella, mumps, rabies, adenoviruses and hepatitis A. Over one billion vaccinees have received vaccines produced on WI-38 or foreign version of Hayflick's original WI-38.
Hayflick is also known for his discovery of the cause of primary atypical pneumonia (“walking pneumonia”) in humans. The etiological agent was first thought to be a virus, but Hayflick showed that it was, in fact, a mycoplasma, a member of the smallest free-living class of microorganisms. The etiological agent was named by him as Mycoplasma pneumoniae, and was first grown by Hayflick on a medium he developed and that bears his name. It is now used world wide for mycoplasma isolation and research.
Hayflick is the recipient of more than twenty-five major awards including the $20,000 Brookdale Award and the Kleemeier Award from the Gerontological Society of America, the Biomedical Sciences and Aging Award from the University of Southern California, The Karl August Forster Lectureship of the Academy of Sciences and Literature and the University of Mainz, Germany, the Samuel Roberts Nobel Foundation Research Recognition Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society for In Vitro Biology, the Sandoz Prize from the International Association of Gerontology, and the Presidential Award from the International Organization of Mycoplasmology.
In 1997, Hayflick was elected Academician and Foreign Member of the Ukrainian Academy of Medical Sciences. In 1998 he was elected corresponding member of the Société de Biologie of France. In 1999, he was presented with the van Weezel Award by the European Society for Animal Cell Technology and the Lord Cohen of Birkenhead Medal by the British Society for Research on Aging. In 1997 the American Aging Association established an Annual Hayflick Lectureship. In 2000 a second Annual Hayflick Lecture also was established by the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Hayflick is the recipient of the year 2001, $10,000 Life Extension Prize and Laureate Diploma from the Regenerative Medicine Secretariat for his "..discovery of the finite replicative capacity of normal human diploid cells.."
Hayflick is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an Honorary Member of the Tissue Culture Association and, according to the Institute of Scientific Information, is one of the most cited contemporary scientists in the world in the fields of biochemistry, biophysics, cell biology, enzymology, genetics and molecular biology. Hayflick is the author of over 275 scientific papers, book chapters and edited books of which four papers are among the 100 most cited scientific papers of the two million papers published in the basic biomedical sciences from 1961 to 1978.
The inverted microscope that Hayflick modified for use in of his tissue culture and mycoplasma work and on which all other such microscopes have been modeled has been acquired by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
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