Robert (Bob) Leif - Candidate for Technical Councilor

Robert C. Leif received a BS in Biochemistry from the University of Chicago in 1959 and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1964. His Ph.D. work at Caltech was the development of a new cytometry technique, the buoyant density separation of cells (erythrocytes in linear gradients of bovine serum albumin). He used this technique to establish that human erythrocytes consisted of a single population and to study their physiology. Bob received postdoctoral training at UCLA (Biophysics, 1964-66) and USC Microbiology-Immunology (1966-67). In his quest to isolate the hematopoietic stem cell, he perfected the Instrumentation for the creation of linear gradients from viscous materials and built a liquid curtain electrophoresis. From 1967 to 1971, Bob taught Biochemistry at Florida State University and a special course in cell separation and analysis (cytometry). His research was on the separation and analysis of cells involved in the immune response including the development of new instrumentation and cytochemical techniques. These included the first electro-optical cell analyzer in collaboration with his student Richard A. Thomas and centrifugal cytology to produce fixed, stained cell monolayers. At that time, Bob published the first review of flow cytometry.

In 1971, Bob moved to the Papanicolaou Cancer Research Institute at the U. of Miami. While at the Pap, Bob had academic appointments at the U. of Miami. He eventually became professor of biomedical engineering and associate professor of both microbiology and oncology, as well as a member of the Comprehensive Cancer Center. He continued with Rick Thomas and his other students to develop the flow analyzer and centrifugal cytology with the dual aims of automating blood differential leukocyte counting and the Pap test. The analyzer, which performed simultaneous electronic cell volume and fluorescence measurements with a holographic grating eventually evolved into the Beckman Coulter leukocyte differential counter and was also a precursor to their Cell Lab Quanta™. Centrifugal cytology was applied to many exfoliated cell types and was the first monolayer technique to be demonstrated to be diagnostic for cervical cytology. Its use also proved that because of the cell cluster disaggregation problem, flow cytometry was a poor choice for cervical cytology automation. Bob together with the late Howard Gratzner and Albert Castro developed the use of an anti-5BrdU to measure DNA synthesis. Bob and Professor Lidia Vallarino proposed the use of rare-earth complexes as labels for cytometry and immunodiagnostics. In order to transform the electro-optical cell analyzer into a commercial hematology instrument and to use Wallace Coulter’s radiofrequency impedance technology, Bob, who had previously consulted and collaborated with Wallace Coulter, moved to Coulter Corp. in 1981. He continued his work on erythrocyte physiology and demonstrated that the erythrocyte buoyant density, which he had demonstrated to be related to cell age, was also related to the ratio of radio frequency to DC impedance. Bob’s buoyant density and centrifugal cytology techniques were used to produce simplified cell mixtures of known composition, which permitted the interpretation of the spectra produced by the leukocyte analyzer. Lidia Vallarino and Bob created the Quantum Dye® lanthanide macrocycles. Bob was the first Corporate Fellow and served as manager of Advanced Concepts at Coulter Corp. He reported to Wallace Coulter. Besides his scientific work and teaching duties as a professor of biomedical engineering, Bob founded the corporate PC committee, which was composed of individuals from information technology, accounting, and engineering. He also provided technical expertise to the corporate capital expenditure committee, and assisted manufacturing. In these roles, he saved the company considerably more money than the cost of his department. He also served on the board of a laser company, in which Coulter had acquired a significant and profitable interest.

In 1993, Bob moved to San Diego and together with Suzanne started Newport Instruments with the aims of developing the Quantum Dye® technology in collaboration with Prof. Lidia Vallarino at Virginia Commonwealth University and automated cell monolayer instrumentation. Bob’s other major scientific interest is high reliability medical software. He created CytometryML, as a prototype XML replacement for both FCS and the ISAC imaging standard.

Bob’s professional activities include being a founding member of ISAC and a member of the first editorial board of Cytometry. Presently he is a member of the ISAC Data Standards Task Force. He also served on the editorial board of Analytical and Quantitative Cytology and Histology. Presently Bob is a chair and an editor of the SPIE BiOS Manipulation and Analysis of Biomolecules, Cells, and Tissues. Bob has attended and participated in cytometry meetings starting with George Wied’s conferences on automated cytology and has attended all of the ISAC conferences starting with Saxon’s River until the present. He is a member of the Clinical Cytometry Society, was a Professional Member of the International Academy of Cytology, and is a Senior Member of the IEEE. Bob is a member of DICOM Working Group 26, which is completing its work on a pathology imaging standard.

Bob has been an author of 96 papers and communications, been an inventor of 11 US patents and has 3 pending, and edited 14 books and proceedings. Bob also performs his civic duty by serving on the boards of 3 local agencies.

Reasons for wishing to serve on the ISAC Council

ISAC is a society with a diverse, world-wide membership. The members essentially have three types of interests: academic, industrial, and clinical. In order for ISAC to continue to prosper, it is essential that the interests of our worldwide membership be served and that the interests of the researchers, businesses, and clinicians be balanced. My interests in clinical cytology automation and the cytometry standard have led me to work with other societies and groups. These interactions suggest that in order to have others use our technology, including our standards; we, as a society, have to interact and cooperate with other societies, particularly those with an international membership. The inclusion of ISAC within the Federation of American Scientists was an excellent first step in this regard.

Goals for ISAC

• Increase the international presence of ISAC: Although it might be appropriate to have an international congress in Asia, there is the problem of the increase in travel costs for most of the ISAC members, who presently live in Europe or North America. There is also the secondary problem that many of the US members pay their own way to meetings outside of the US. An initial compromise would be to consult actively with the present Asian membership on where in the US and Europe would be most convenient for them. Another possibility would be to have ISAC involved in a meeting that involves multiple countries in Asia that is similar to the Annual Meeting of the German Society of Cytometry.
• Controlling costs: Because of the quality of its journal, Cytometry, and meetings, ISAC does provide considerable value for its membership. However, it is necessary to keep in the tradition of Paul Robinson, Bob Zucker, and others in maintaining the affordability of ISAC. Our last International conference in Quebec City was $ 450. Our next conference in Budapest is $650 and a recent conference in Montpeiller was $725. This difference in apparent cost between the Quebec City and the other meetings would be increased if the true costs for meetings were compared. The true cost is the sum of the cost paid by the individual to attend and the money gained or lost by ISAC on the meeting divided by the number of attendees. Although the potential scientific value of our meeting in Hungary is obvious, the financial costs will be significant. This will be exacerbated by the decrease in value of the US dollar vs. other currencies. Unanticipated changes in a large cost, such as the use of a convention center outside of the US, can significantly affect the financial reserves of ISAC. ISAC can protect itself against currency value fluctuations by, for instance, investing part of its reserves in banking accounts and other conservative investments that are denominated in Euros and other strong currencies.
  A useful means of controlling costs is to publish our financial statements on the ISAC web site. These statements should include a description of all significant transactions and the sums and averages of each type of small transaction. Since the membership has every right to know what is being done with their money, the Council should maximize the availability of this information to the membership. As some of you have observed, I often ask questions of the speakers at scientific meetings. I intend to continue my questioning at ISAC Council meetings.
• Data standard development: This work includes continuing in the development, implementation, and aiding the acceptance of the new Analytical Cytometry Standard, ACS. My goals for the ACS are to maximize: the scientific and engineering quality of the standard, reuse data-types, such as those from FCS and other research and medical standards, and to cooperate with other societies in order to assure interoperability with their standards. The XML schemas and Resource Description Framework documents, which will be the major deliverables for the ACS, are software objects, which will need to be acceptable to the FDA and similar regulatory agencies as components of medical devices.
• Worldwide education: One of the benefits of our International Congresses and other meetings is that the audience is exposed to outstanding lectures. Just as several major universities are putting their lectures online and even are opening up satellite campuses, it should be possible to put some of the lectures up on the ISAC web site. In order not to compete with the attendance at the meetings, the availability of these lectures could be delayed. This would help to disseminate cytometry to the less developed countries. The posters could be put online as PowerPoint or PDF files. Any use of the presentations and posters would require the authors’ permission. A similar means could be found for dissemination of the tutorials. If there is a charge for the tutorials, it could be reduced for scientists in low income counties.
• Internet distribution has decreased the cost of publishing and distributing Cytometry and has minimized the cost of publishing in color. In fact, because the cost of color printing is high, many figures in Cytometry now include in their caption, "[Color figure can be viewed in the online issue....]". The normative format (reference version) of Cytometry is now the downloadable file. The management of the technology required to maintain the integrity of the Journal as a single entity rather than a separately downloadable collection of papers will be a near term problem. In order to maximize Cytometry’s impact factor, the ISAC Council must make every effort to keep the cost of our online papers affordable and competitive.

As I stated in my short CV, I have served on the Cytometry Editorial Board and have reviewed papers for Cytometry and other journals; and have attended every ISAC meeting since its inception and precursor meetings. I believe that I have significantly benefited from my ISAC membership and should reciprocate by providing my experience and effort to maintain the present quality of ISAC and hopefully to improve it. I would greatly appreciate your vote for Technical Councilor. As a member of the Coalition for Cytometry Worldwide, I ask that you please consider voting for the other members of the Coalition. President Elect: Paul Smith (E); Secretary: John Nolan (US); Biological Councilors: Patrice Petit (E) and Ulrich Henning (SA); Clinical Councilors: Shazib Pervaiz (A) and Vincent Shankey (US).