Father of liposomes dies

Alec Bangham, the researcher who in 1961 discovered liposomes -- tiny close-membraned vesicles -- died last month at the age of 88. A liposomeImage: Wikimedia commons, Dennis BartenTrained as a clinical pathologist, Bangham eventually switched paths to lead a 60-plus-year research career, during which time he became known as the father of liposomes, which have since been used to deliver drugs for cancer and other diseases. "[Alec] would have an idea, and he would not think about whether thi

Written byJef Akst

| 3 min read

Alec Bangham, the researcher who in 1961 discovered liposomes -- tiny close-membraned vesicles -- died last month at the age of 88.

A liposome
Image: Wikimedia commons,
Dennis Barten

Trained as a clinical pathologist, Bangham eventually switched paths to lead a 60-plus-year research career, during which time he became known as the father of liposomes, which have since been used to deliver drugs for cancer and other diseases. "[Alec] would have an idea, and he would not think about whether this idea would increase his reputation or stature," said Dave Deamer, a biophysicist at the University of California Santa Cruz, who spent a six month sabbatical in Bangham's lab in 1975. "What Alec was interested in was the idea itself -- testing the idea and taking great pleasure in the pure science of research." Bangham first saw liposomes (published in linkurl:1964;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WK7-4W7CV68-4&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F1964&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1278931836&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=5bea4f4c4fa854c97294da6348e1aab5 and linkurl:1965);http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WK7-4W7KJ0G-P&_user=10&_coverDate=08%2F31%2F1965&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1278978636&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=cc9a5cbab2bda3734e280857f3826d05 when he and his colleague R.W. Horne watched under a new electron microscope at the Babraham Institute, in Cambridge, UK, as dry phospholipids dispersed in water spontaneously formed small structures with closed membranes that resembled the bilayer of living cells. Since that time, the utility of liposomes has been recognized across a wide variety of fields, from medicine to cosmetics. Bangham and his wife Rosalind once flew to Paris to meet with Jacques Rouet, president of Christian Dior, to see liposomes being made by the kilogram for the company's cosmetic products, wrote Sir Brian Heap, a friend of Bangham's, in a linkurl:recent story in The Guardian.;http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/31/alec-bangham-obituary Over the course of his career, which included 30 years as a staff scientist at the Babraham Institute, Bangham researched a wide variety of topics, from typhoid disease and the effects of cortisone to blood clotting and vitamin A intoxication. In the late 1970s, Bangham teamed up with Colin Morley at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, to devise a solid lung surfactant that prevented the lung from filling up with fluid -- a linkurl:treatment that was used successfully;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v271/n5641/abs/271162a0.html for babies suffering from respiratory distress syndrome. Out of that work, an artificial lung expanding compound known as "Alec" was launched. Bangham also delighted in exciting others about his ideas, said Deamer, who wrote a memoir about Bangham that will appear in the May issue of The FASEB Journal. When Deamer invited Bangham to give a lecture at the University of California, Davis, in the 1980s, Bangham set up an elaborate demonstration, filling a trough with ether-soaked water and lighting it on fire in front of a lecture hall of some 200 people. He extinguished the fire by touching a glass rod covered in phospolipids to show how a single monolayer of phosolipids could suffocate the flames. He then relit the fire and re-extinguished it using a bit of his own earwax, saying, "Any lipid will do." "Even today, people come up to me and say how they remember that demonstration," Deamer said. Bangham received numerous honors during his career, including fellowship in the Royal Society in 1977 and in University College London in 1981. He was also elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1997. He published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, according to ISI, the last of which he published linkurl:last November in The FASEB Journal;http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/full/23/11/3644 at the age of 88. "At the end of his life he was still bursting with ideas," Heap wrote in The Guardian. The evening before he died, he gathered a small group of friends and colleagues to tell them about his latest hypothesis. Knowing that cell membranes carry electrical charges that are recognized by the immune system, Bangham theorized that it might be possible to hide those charges, and thus protect transplant patients against organ rejection, using "a person's bouquet of weak volatile organic compounds" -- the same compounds that are used by some animals to identify individuals, such as a mother mouse recognizing her own young. "It was a surreal moment," Heap wrote. Bangham's wife died last November. He is survived by three sons and a daughter.
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[May 1999]

Meet the Author

Jef Akst

Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.

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