Award for Australian biotechnology pioneer

Australian biotechnology pioneer, Dr Tom Grace, has been awarded the Society for In Vitro Biology's highest honour, the 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the development of invertebrate in vitro biology.

Dr Grace was presented with the Award at a symposium held in his honour in San Francisco recently. His research laid the foundations for insect cell culture causing a rapid expansion in this research field.

"Insect cell culture was used to find new ways to control insect pests and enabled the detailed study of both plant and animal viruses which were spread by insects," the now retired Dr Grace said. "As technology began to advance, being able to 'see' viruses with electron microscopes, the discovery of the structure of DNA and new techniques in biochemistry, the research really began to take off."

Dr Grace's techniques and protocols are used widely today to find ways to treat insect-borne diseases, such as Ross River Fever, and his recipe for keeping insect cells alive, "Grace's medium", is used in laboratories worldwide and is fundamental to much modern research.

As early as 1915 researchers tried to study insect cells in vitro but it wasn't until Dr Grace's groundbreaking work at CSIRO Entomology during the 1950s that insect cells could successfully survive and multiply in the laboratory.

Dr Grace developed and perfected the techniques for culturing insect cells and he was the first person to establish long term cultures of insect cells. In vitro biology, or cell culture, is the growing of cells outside living organisms.

"The research started out as an Honour's project in 1953 and it took me almost a decade to establish the first cell lines," Dr Grace said. "To put it simply, I came up with the right mix of ingredients which kept insect cells alive in the laboratory environment."

Once he established the cultures of insect cells Dr Grace was able to closely study cellular processes and infect the cells with viruses to determine how the viruses grew and were spread.

Dr Grace's research achievements have had a lasting impact on insect cell culture research. One application of insect cell culture is to use modified viruses to infect cultured insect cells and in this way trigger the cells produce specific proteins. These virus-cell systems are now used widely as a tool to aid research and to produce proteins of importance to agriculture and medicine.

Dr Grace also received recognition for his work in 1990 when the Society for Invertebrate Pathology awarded him with the "Founder's Lecture Award".