Keith Campbell (biologist)

Campbell was born in Birmingham, England, to an English mother and Scottish father. He started his education in Perth, Scotland, but, when he was eight years old, his family returned to Birmingham, where he attended King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys.[8] He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology from the Queen Elizabeth College, University of London (now part of King's College London).[9] In 1983 Campbell was awarded the Marie Curie Research Scholarship, which led to postgraduate studies and later his PhD from the University of Sussex[10] (Brighton, England, UK).[11][12][13]

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 Campbell 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 used 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 six years old (dying from a viral infection and not old age, as has been suggested).

Campbell had a key role in the creation of Dolly, as 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 quiescent or "G0" arrested somatic cells as nuclear donors. In fact, in 2006 Ian Wilmut admitted that Keith Campbell deserved "66 per cent" of the credit for the work on Dolly the sheep.[14]

In 1997, Ritchie and Campbell in collaboration with PPL (Pharmaceutical Proteins Limited) created another sheep named "Polly", created from genetically altered skin cells containing a human gene.[15] 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.[16][17]

From November 1999, Campbell held the post of Professor of Animal Development, Division of Animal Physiology, School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham where he continued to study embryo growth and differentiation. He supported 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. Stem cells can be isolated from embryonic, fetal and adult derived material and more recently by overexpression of certain genes for the production of "induced pluripotent cells". Campbell believed 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.[18][19][20][21]

In 2008, he received the Shaw Prize for Medicine and Life Sciences jointly with Ian Wilmut and Shinya Yamanaka.[22] He was awarded the Pioneer Award from the International Embryo Transfer Society posthumously in 2015 [23]

Campbell died on 5 October 2012, aged 58, after hanging himself in his bedroom following an angry outburst at home with his wife while heavily intoxicated. It was determined that he had not intended to kill himself.[24][25] He was buried at Bretby Crematorium, Burton Upon Trent, in Derbyshire, England.[26] He is survived by his wife, Kathy, and two daughters, Claire and Lauren.