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Who is Dr. James Till?

Dr. James Till is a Canadian biophysicist, born on August 25th, 1931. In 1957, he attended Yale University, where he received a Ph.D. in biophysics. Then, in the 1960s, Drs. James Till and Ernest McCulloch conducted a series of experiments on mice to discover the "stem cell".

Dr. James Till

The early life of James Edgar Till

  • James Till was born in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan in 1931

  • He attended the University of Saskatchewan and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1952, for which he received scholarships awarded by the Standard Oil Company, and the National Research Council  

  • He then obtained his Ph.D in biophysics from Yale University in 1957 and attended the University of Toronto , where he completed his Post-doctoral

  • At the age of 29, Harold Johns recruited Dr. Till to the Ontario Cancer Institute at Princess Margaret Hospital.

  • Dr. Till then chose to work with Dr. Ernest McCulloch at the University of Toronto. Drs. Till and McCulloch met at a party hosted by the Department of Medical Biophysics. McCulloch was in search of a physicist, to asisst in the research on total body irradiation. Till volunteered to asisst McCulloch

Discovery of the Stem cell

  • In the 1960s, Drs. Till and McCulloch began conducting several experiments which involved injecting bone marrow cells into irradiated mice.

  • Till and McCulloch observed that small raised lumps grew on the irradated mice, thenumber of lumps that grew were proportionate to the number of bone marrow cells injected.

  • Till and Mculloch continued conducting experiments.

  •  In 1963, Drs. Till and McCulloch published their stem cell theory in a scientific journal named "Nature".

  • In 1963, Till and McCulloch began working with Lou Siminovitch, a student of molecular biology in Canada. Together, they obtained evidence that bone marrow cells were capable of self-renewal which was a crucial idea for the stem cells that they had discovered.

Later Career

  • In 1969, Till became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

  • By 1980, Dr. Till became interested in evaluating and developing cancer therapies

  • Dr. Till holds the title of University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto

  • Till also has his own blog called "Cancer Stem Cell News"

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