Society for In Vitro Biology

About This Association

The history of the Society for In Vitro Biology (SIVB) owes its structure, development, and role in the scientific and biotechnology community to the parent line of the Tissue Culture Association. In 1948, the National Research Council committees on Cellular Physiology, Cytochemistry, and Nutrition held a tissue culture conference at Hershey Pennsylvania. This meeting was attended by scientists actively engaged in various aspects of cellular nutrition and growth of human, animal, insect and plant cells. The result of this scientific meeting was the establishment of the Tissue Culture Commission (TCC) which subsequently became known as the Tissue Culture Association (TCA). The goal of the Hershey Conference was to establish a set of parameters by which the problems, associated with the constitution and fractionation of nutritive media, could be documented, and studied. The conference focused on three main issues: nutritional requirements of animal cells; accurate measurement of cell growth; and the possibility of preparing synthetic media capable of sustaining the growth of animal cells in vitro. During the last meeting of the conference, sixteen of the 30 scientists attending the conference met to discuss the formation of the TCC. The original aims of establishing the commission were based solely on issues related to centralizing information and resources. This would give investigators more time to devote to basic research: The issues of interest were to: determine the kinds of media needed by investigators; to evaluate the possibility of preparing media in a central laboratory for distribution at a modest cost; and to prepare a reference guide of published research specific for the area of tissue culture. The TCC remained active for four years, during which membership increased to more than 250 participating scientists. One-fourth of the TCC membership was from foreign countries, which is approximate to the representation that we have currently in the association.

Publications

Conventions

Specialties:

1. Biology

Information Summary