Beatrice Mintz

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Beatrice Mintz
Scientific career
FieldsEmbryology, Developmental biology
InstitutionsUniversity of Chicago
Fox Chase Cancer Center
Doctoral advisorEmil Witschi

Beatrice Mintz (January 24, 1921 – January 3, 2022) was an American

transgenic mammals.[2]

In 1996, she shared the inaugural

.

Early life and education

Beatrice Mintz was born in New York City on January 24, 1921,[1] to Samuel and Janie Stein Mintz, a Jewish couple from Mikulintsy, then in Austrian Galicia, now in Ukraine. She was graduated magna cum laude from Hunter College in 1941 [4] and then took graduate studies at New York University for a year. Because of anti-Semitic quotas for admission to colleges on the east coast, she attended the University of Iowa, where she received a master's degree in 1944 and her Ph.D. in 1946,[4] studying amphibians under Emil Witschi.[2]

Research

A chimeric mouse (right) and her pups, demonstrating how cells from different donor strains result in a mosaic coat color in the chimera; note her one pink eye

After graduation, Mintz accepted a professorship in biological science at the

transgenesis.[2] In 1965, she became an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania.[4]

Mintz and Andrzej K. Tarkowski independently made the first mouse embryonic chimeras in the 1960s by aggregating two embryos at the eight-cell stage. The resultant mice developed normally and their tissues were a mixture of cells derived from the two donor embryos.[5] Mintz went on to create viable chimeric embryos containing blastomeres from up to fifteen different laboratory mice.[1] She developed a technique that involved mixing cells from a black mouse strain into the blastocysts of white or brown mice in vitro. She then surgically transferred these early embryos into surrogate mothers and, after birth, traced the tissue contribution of each cell type made by studying the coat color.[6] Her cell fusion technique was successful where others had failed due to the choice to remove the zona pellucida with pronase treatment, rather than physically. Since 1967 Mintz has created more than 25,000 offspring using this technique.[2]

Mintz demonstrated that

pluripotent stem cell cultures ever made.[3]

Mintz and Rudolf Jaenisch published a technological breakthrough in 1974. Jaenisch was a post-doctoral researcher at Princeton University at the time. He was interested in why only certain types of cancer occurred when he injected adult mice with viruses. Inspired by Mintz's earlier work, he wanted to know whether injecting virus into early-stage embryos would result in the DNA being incorporated, and what types of cancer would occur.[8] Mintz agreed to work with Jaenisch, who joined her lab as a visiting fellow for nine months. They showed that DNA from a virus, SV40, could be integrated into the DNA of developing mice and persist into adulthood without apparent tumor formation.[9]

Although only somatic cells were affected, meaning the DNA would not be passed on to future generations, these were the first mice ever made with foreign DNA and this experiment proved healthy

malignant melanoma.[1]

Honors

Mintz received numerous awards and honors including the first

Ernst Jung Gold Medal for Medicine (1990),[16] the John Scott Medal (1994),[17] the American Cancer Society National Medal of Honor for Basic Research (1997), a citation for Outstanding Woman in Science (1993) from the New York Academy of Sciences, and, in 2007, was a recipient of the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize.[18]

On March 8, 2011, the U.S.

Szent-Gyorgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research.[19][20][21]

In 2012, Mintz was awarded the Ninth Annual

She received honorary doctorate degrees from five universities. She delivered dozens of special lectures, including the Ninetieth Anniversary Lecture at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory (1978) and the first Frontiers in Biomedical Sciences Lecture at the New York Academy of Sciences (1980). She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences,[23] a senior member of the Institute for Cancer Research, Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia,[24] and served on the editorial boards of various scientific journals.

Personal life and death

Mintz died on January 3, 2022, from heart failure, at age 100. She had dementia in her later years.[25][26][27]

References

  1. ^
  2. ^
  3. ^ a b c Alumni Fellows, 2002 Recipients Archived November 20, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, The University of Iowa
  4. ^
    Smithsonian Institution Archives
    . Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  5. PMID 14623817
    .
  6. .
  7. ^ George Klein (April 2015). "Resisting Cancer". The Scientist.
  8. PMID 15383657
    .
  9. .
  10. .
  11. ^ "The GSA Medal". Genetics Society of America. Archived from the original on July 15, 2015. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  12. ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter M" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved July 29, 2014.
  13. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved June 6, 2022.
  14. ^ "Beatrice Mintz". Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  15. ^ "Recipients of the Amory Prize". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on January 16, 2018. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  16. ^ "Laureates 1990 to 2017". Archived from the original on February 9, 2019. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  17. ^ "City Of Philadelphia's John Scott Award Honors Cancer Researcher For 'Crazy Ideas'". The Scientist. December 12, 1994.
  18. ^ "Three geneticists win 2007 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize". The Rockefeller University. March 25, 2008. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  19. ^ "Fox Chase Cancer Center's Beatrice Mintz, PhD, Receives the 6th Annual Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research". Fox Chase Center. March 8, 2011. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  20. ^ "2011 Prize: Beatrice Mintz, Ph.D." National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR). March 28, 2017. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  21. ^ Perry, David (November 21, 2018). "Bea Mintz: The Pioneer of Transgenics—and So Much More". National Foundation for Cancer Research. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  22. ^ "Beatrice Mintz, PhD, Receives Ninth Annual AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research". Fox Chase Center. March 27, 2012. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  23. ^ "Member Directory -- Beatrice Mintz". www.nasonline.org. National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved January 8, 2022. Membership Type: Emeritus (elected 1973)
  24. ^ "Beatrice Mintz, PhD". www.foxchase.org. Fox Chase Cancer Center. February 10, 2020. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  25. ^ Seelye, Katharine Q. (January 13, 2022). "Beatrice Mintz, Groundbreaking Cancer Researcher, Dies at 100". New York Times. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  26. ^ "Beatrice Mintz | In Memoriam". American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  27. ^ Chernoff, Jonathan (January 7, 2022). "Beatrice Mintz, PhD, pioneering researcher at Fox Chase, dies at 100". The Cancer Letter. 48 (1). Retrieved January 9, 2022.

External links