Keith Campbell (biologist)

Keith H. S. Campbell (born 1954) is an English biologist who was a member of the team that in 1996 first cloned a mammal, a Finnish Dorset lamb named Dolly, from fully differentiated adult mammary cells.

Campbell grew up in Birmingham in England and Perth, Scotland. He obtained his bachelor's degree in microbiology from the University of London and his doctoral degree from the University of Sussex (Brighton, UK).

Campbell's interest in cloning mammals was inspired by work done by Karl Illmensee and John Gurdon.

Working at the Roslin Institute since 1991, Campbell became involved with the cloning efforts led by Ian Wilmut. In July 1995 Keith Campell and Bill Ritchie succeeded in producing a pair of lambs, Megan and Morag from embryonic cells, which had differentiated in culture. Then, in 1996, a team led by Ian Wilmut with Keith Campbell as the main (66% of the credit) contributor utilised the same technique and shocked the world by successfully cloning a sheep from adult mammary cells. Dolly, a Finn Dorset sheep, named after the singer Dolly Parton, was born in 1996 and lived to be 6 years old (dying from a viral infection and not old age, as has been suggested). Campbell has been attributed a key role because he had the crucial idea of co-ordinating the stages of the "cell cycle" of the donor somatic cells and the recipient eggs and using diploid quiscent or 'G0' arrested somatic cells as nuclear donors.

In 1998 Ritchie and Campbell in collaboration with PPL (Pharmaceutical Proteins Limited) created another sheep named 'Polly' . She was made from genetically altered skin cells containing a human gene.

In 2000, after joining PPL Ltd, Campbell and his PPL team (based in North America) were successful in producing the world's first piglets by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the so called cloning technique. Furthermore, the PPL teams based in Roslin, Scotland and Blacksburg (USA) used the technique to produce the first gene targeted domestic animals as well as a range of animals producing human therapeutic proteins in their milk.

Since November 1999 Campbell has held the post of Professor of Animal Development, Division of Animal Physiology, School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham where he continues to study embryo growth and differentiation. He supports the use of SCNT for the production of personalised stem cell therapies and for the study of human diseases and the use of cybrid embryo production to overcome the lack of human eggs available for research. Although stem cells can be isolated from embryonic, foetal and adult derived material and more recently by overexpression of certain genes for the production of so called induced pluripotent cells (iPS), he feels that at the present all potential stem cell populations should be used for both basic and applied research which may provide basic scientific knowledge and lead to the development of cell therapies.

Selected publications

• Kind, A. J.; McCreath, K. J.; Howcroft, J.; Campbell, K. H. S.; Colman, A.; Schnieke, A. E. (2000). "Production of gene-targeted sheep by nuclear transfer from cultured somatic cells". Nature 405 (6790): 1066–1069. doi:10.1038/35016604. PMID 10890449. 
• Polejaeva, I. A.; Chen, S. H.; Vaught, T. D.; Page, R. L.; Mullins, J.; Ball, S.; Dai, Y.; Boone, J. et al (2000). "Cloned pigs produced by nuclear transfer from adult somatic cells". Nature 407 (6800): 86–90. doi:10.1038/35024082. PMID 10993078. 
• Campbell, K. H. S. (1999). "Nuclear Equivalence, Nuclear Transfer, and the Cell Cycle". Cloning 1 (1): 3–15. doi:10.1089/15204559950020058. PMID 16218826. 
• Keith H. S. Campbell. (1999). Cloning farm Animal Species. Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology. 10:245-252.
• Campbell K.H.S. & Wilmut, I. (1998) Nuclear Transfer. In Animal Breeding: Technology for the 21st Century. Ed: A.J. Clark (Harwood Academic Publishers). P47-62
• Campbell, K. H. S. (1998). Cloning Dolly:Implications for Human Medicine. In ‘Fertility and Reproductive Medicine’ (Eds: R. D. Kempers, J. Cohen, A. F. Haney, and J. B. Younger) pp3–11. (Excerpta Medica: International Congress series 1183).
• Campbell, K. (1997). "Totipotency or multipotentiality of cultured cells: Applications and progress". Theriogenology 47: 63–72. doi:10.1016/S0093-691X(96)00340-8. 
• Wilmut, I.; Schnieke, A. E.; McWhir, J.; Kind, A. J.; Campbell, K. H. S. (1997). "Viable offspring derived from fetal and adult mammalian cells". Nature 385 (6619): 810–813. doi:10.1038/385810a0. PMID 9039911. 
• Schnieke, A. E.; Kind, A. J.; Ritchie, W. A.; Mycock, K.; Scott, A. R.; Ritchie, M.; Wilmut, I.; Colman, A. et al (1997). "Human Factor IX Transgenic Sheep Produced by Transfer of Nuclei from Transfected Fetal Fibroblasts". Science 278 (5346): 2130–2133. doi:10.1126/science.278.5346.2130. PMID 9405350. 

External links

• archive copy of profile with selected references
• Profile at CIRS
• Profile