Argonne at 50

Pioneering the automated growth of human cancer cells

ARGONNE, Ill. (July 10, 1996) — In 1970, much of America read the top- selling book "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but Were Afraid to Ask." But scientists at Argonne National Laboratory were taking a different approach toward vexing questions of human biology: They were growing human cancer cells.

To help medical researchers get human cancer cells for experiments, Argonne scientists developed the first successful small, automated system that would grow animal cells without interruption. By July 1970, the team had completed a test during which human cancer cells were grown continuously for nine months.

Today, another Argonne team composed of Russian and American scientists is developing a small, automated system to decode DNA within human cells. Among benefits possible from that device is discovery of the mechanism that turns cancer cells on and, perhaps, can turn them off.

Like the current effort, the 1970 breakthrough was designed to make a tough task easier. Human cells had been grown in a laboratory before, but only in large, complex facilities and in cultures that grew for only a limited time. The new Argonne system was compact, fast, reliable, and relatively inexpensive, so biologists and biochemists now could maintain their own continuous stock of cells in their own laboratories.

The new system's advantages in the fight against cancer were obvious, and it was quickly seized upon by medical researchers. At the same time, the device was flexible enough to accommodate other types of cultures.

Carl Peraino, Silvia Bacchetti, and William J. Eisler of Argonne developed the system. It incorporated a device called a "Nephelostat," which was also developed at Argonne, by Eisler and R.B. Webb.

Eisler and Webb designed the device for automatic maintenance of micro-organisms in continuous growth, such as yeasts and bacteria. They found the system could be adapted for mammalian cells as well.

The Nephelostat continually renewed the culture's growth by controlling the amount of nutrient it received. By measuring light passing through the suspension, it could calculate just the right amount of nutrient that the culture needed. The more cells in the suspension, the more light was scattered. Therefore, whenever light measurements indicated that the concentration of cells had risen beyond the level set by the experimenter, the Argonne system automatically added fresh nutrient while withdrawing equal amounts of cell suspension.

The system also recorded how often nutrient was added, allowing researchers to easily compute the rate of cell growth at a fixed concentration.

Argonne's current cell-focused effort in support of the worldwide Human Genome Program is headed by Andrei Mirzabekov, who also directs the Russian Academy of Sciences' Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow. Mirzabekov's team of biologists, chemists, mathematicians, physicists and engineers are working at Argonne to develop a new super-efficient "biochip" that could help scientists decipher nature's DNA code for building and operating all organisms, including humans, other animals, plants and bacteria.

Their biological microchip, about the same size as an electronic microchip, has the potential to decode or "sequence" DNA thousands of times faster than current methods.

By combining the Mirzabekov-led research in DNA sequencing with research at Argonne's Structural Biology Center, which determines the structure of proteins, scientists will be able to compare the structure of the protein with the genetic code that created it. They may soon be able to quickly tell from DNA sequences what shapes proteins will take and how they function. They could then use the structure of genes to predict the structure of proteins, cells and even whole organisms.

The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory conducts basic and applied scientific research across a wide spectrum of disciplines, ranging from high-energy physics to climatology and biotechnology. Since 1990, Argonne has worked with more than 600 companies and numerous federal agencies and other organizations to help advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for the future. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

For more information, please contact Catherine Foster (630/252-5580 or cfoster@anl.gov) at Argonne.