History of the Division of Animal Clinical Chemistry: 1974–1983

Someone once said that there is dignity in nostalgia. In the prose that follows, I have attempted to gather up and pin down in a net of words the landscape of my time in the AACC. Of course, this story reflects my own interests and prejudices. It has all of the limitations imposed on imagination by culture and experience, but after all, I hope that it conveys to the reader the arc of the early days in the Division of Animal Clinical Chemistry (DACC). It finally is a spiritual map of this writer’s own journey in the AACC and the Committee, and as a kind of autobiography, it contains the entire climate and topography of my activities with the Committee, with all of the vaunting ambitions, oversized ego, technical curiosity, organizational energy, little-boy insecurities, the harder edge of success, and the desire for immortality that have sustained me in so many of my pursuits in life. This reminiscence, too, represents a view of the AACC in the days when it was much smaller than it is today. It is an instrument of perception of the possibilities that young men and women can achieve when they work together for a common cause, and it derives its color, intimate contour, and weight of authenticity from the experiences that I have personally gathered in my early sojourn in the incubus of the AACC. Occasionally, a tone of self-aggrandizement may creep in, but I feel that this is the result of what once was a sinewy lust for advancing the cause of the DACC, with the exultant resourcefulness I found in its members, that now has become nearer to a longing for their friendship and a remembrance of their high spirits. Alas, it seems that as time goes on my thoughts are becoming more sentimental about the Division. In any event, I hope that those who read these stories of things so long past will at least remember that we once lived and worked with a great group of people. That is the long-lasting reward that the AACC has bequeathed to me. The first stirrings of the DACC of the AACC were at the epicenter of risk taking and gambling in North America, at the Twenty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the AACC in Las Vegas, Nevada in August of 1974. I remember it very clearly even today, more than a quarter of a century later. I was sitting in a large seminar room that held nearly 1000 people, all listening to hospital-oriented laboratory topics at an AACC morning symposium. As a person who worked in industry, I sat there and thought, “There must be some other people here who have the same interests that I do.” After talking to several scientists at that AACC meeting in Las Vegas in 1974, I proposed that a committee be formed within the AACC to specialize in Animal Clinical Chemistry. I sent a letter to the then President of the AACC, Roy Rand, in September of 1974. Roy, confirming the theme of risk-taking and reaching for more, approved the Ad Hoc Committee on Animal Clinical Chemistry in October 1974, and to my surprise, he appointed me chairman. Roy did two things right there that ran through the Committee, and later the Division, for decades: He reached to broaden the AACC into adjacent fields of clinical chemistry, and he gave the Animal Group the independence that became their hallmark throughout the years. I immediately formed a committee of four AACC members: Carl Moyer (Warner Lambert), John Moran ( Upjohn), Dick Schoer (Lederle), and myself (Pfizer). Dr. Roy Rand was the ex offico liaison with the AACC. This group began work on seminars, meetings, presentations, and papers related to animal clinical chemistry, particularly emphasizing toxicology and drug safety evaluation topics in November 1974. Our first meeting was on November 14, 1974, in New York City. The first scientific presentation of the Animal Clinical Chemistry group in the AACC was at the Joint International Symposium of the IFCC and the AACC in Toronto in July 1975. The committee had spent the first months of 1975 organizing the meeting within the AACC and had two committee meetings that spring. Approximately 50 people showed up at the presentation, which included 10 papers, a discussion of the objectives of the committee, one broken microphone, and refreshments. After that meeting, which was well received, the Committee on Animal Clinical Chemistry was well established within the AACC. Bob Emmons spent much time working with Roy in his role as Past-President and Board of Directors (BOD) member, and lobbying for funding from the AACC. It was during the National Meeting in Houston that Dr. Rand presented the case for the Ad Hoc Committee to the BOD of the AACC, and they approved it (although some apparently with reservations). The next scientific meeting at AACC of animal clinical chemists was held at the 28th National Meeting in Houston on August 2, 1976. This meeting of 10 persons included presentations on the sensitivity of various enzyme analyses to hepatotoxins ( J.F. Dooley) and adapting the Technicon SMAC analyzer to run animal chemistries. A proposal to officially organize the group was also presented. Dr. Dooley had formally petitioned President Rand for official recognition of an Ad Hoc Committee to promote animal clinical chemistry programs within the AACC. Dr. Rand endorsed this committee and offered the AACC, with BOD approval, as a temporary or possibly permanent home for it. Those present accepted Dr. Rand’s invitation and decided to hold afternoon and evening sessions the Sunday before the 1977 AACC Meeting in Chicago. This official recognition of the Laboratory Animal Clinical Analysis Group (LACAG) marked the initiation of the process that led to the formation of the AACC Division. The original members of the LACAG were Joseph Dooley, Carl Moyer, Govinda Malya, John Moran, Dick Schroer, Paul Chin, and Bob Emmons. During the 1976 National Meeting in Houston (which was the beginning of the involvement of Bob Emmons), Joseph Dooley (Pfizer), Carl Moyer (Parke-Davis), Dick Schorer (Lederle), John Moran (UpJohn), Horst Leutkemeier (Ciba-Geigy), Herbert Falk (Lederle), and Bob Emmons (Kodak) organized a scientific session. There were others there, including Jim Bare (Miles Labs), who went on to be of great help through the early years. The suite and refreshments were provided jointly by the Technicon and Union Carbide Corporations. Three papers were presented at this meeting, and although I cannot for certain put an author to each, I remember one was given by John Moran. The papers were: Use of Multiple Serum Enzyme Assays During Drug Safety Testing The Hepatotoxic Effects of Thioacetamide and Carbon Tetrachloride and the Sensitivity of Various Enzyme Analyses in Detecting Changes at Various Dose Levels Adaptation of the Technicon SMAC Analyzer to Perform Animal Clinical Chemistries The second part of this meeting was devoted to a discussion that concerned itself with more formal organization of the group. Dr. Rand’s letter to the Ad Hoc Committee was read. In it, Roy expressed his feeling that this was a good idea and offered a permanent or temporary home within the AACC. It was not until later that week that we found out that the BOD of the AACC had agreed to form an Ad Hoc Committee for Animal Clinical Chemistry. At that meeting, we also agreed to the following: We would try to have an afternoon or evening session before the start of the 1977 AACC National Meeting in Chicago and try to have it listed in the AACC program. “Dr. Joseph Dooley and Dr. Carl Moyer will follow up on the 1977 program and take charge of obtaining a suite, papers to be presented, and will contact other potential members in the meetings they attend. Bob Emmons will act as secretary to the group and will: (1) issue a formal call through the trade newsletters to other animal clinical chemists in the US, to write ‘Letters of Interest’ in the activities of this group; (2) keep a list of all those who have and will in the future demonstrate such interest.” One of the things we decided was that I was to begin a newsletter, which I did. This is why in addition to Bob Emmons’ notes and trip reports, we have so much information. Bob kept most of these early data. Horst Luetkemeier (Ciba-Geigy) was from Switzerland and had flown over to attend the meeting. His assignment was to act as a liaison between the British and German groups and ourselves. By 1977 we were well on our way, and I expanded the committee to include Govinda Malya (ICI), Paul Chin (Carnegie Mellon), and Edie Williams (Ortho). In March of that year the Committee on Animal Clinical Chemistry originated a series of regional meetings around the country to bring the scientific and professional development that was our mission to people who could not attend distant national meetings and to enable them to interact with their colleagues on a more frequent basis. On April 27, 1978, the Committee organized the first regional meeting in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, right across from Philadelphia. The second meeting was at Elkhart, Indiana in the spring of 1978. The Upjohn meeting was held January 13, 1978, and was held to form a Mid-West Animal Clinical Analysis Group. Fourteen people attended. There was a Committee meeting in Washington, DC and then again at Pfizer in 1978. There was another Steering Committee meeting in Rochester, New York, October 26, 1977, at which we set our 5-year goals. These regional meetings were the beginning of a national campaign that eventually saw them spread to the South, the Midwest, the East, and the West. Later, the concept was even brought to the local sections. The Animal Clinical Chemistry group met in Rochester, New York in the fall of 1977 and established 5-year goals (met within 3 years), planned a membership drive and a roundtable meeting held in the spring of 1977 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and organized a program for the 1977 Chicago meeting. Attendance at the LACAG program in Chicago was impressive, and the organization grew steadily, publishing a semi-annual newsletter and holding regional meetings in the spring and the fall of each year. The next year, the Animal Clinical Chemistry group held a scientific and business meeting on Tuesday, July 25, 1978, at the 30th National AACC Meeting in San Francisco. Another such gathering was held on July 22, 1980, at the 31st National AACC Meeting in Boston. This continued with every national meeting. By this time, the Animal Clinical Chemistry group was a recognized and successful scientific and professional organization within the AACC. In addition to the very active participation in the AACC national meetings and the two or three regional meetings around the country, the Animal Division in 1981 began to participate in larger meetings with local sections of the AACC. In 1981, I was Chairman of the Connecticut Valley Section of the AACC, as well as the Chairman of the Animal Clinical Chemistry Committee. At that time, the Northeast AACC sections were planning a regional meeting of their own with the six sections in that part of the country. As Chairman, I brought in the Connecticut Valley Section, but I also included the Animal Clinical Chemistry group in the meeting of local sections. We had by that time extensive experience with regional meetings across the country. At this juncture, Joyce Kuhn was member of the Executive Committee of the New York Metro Section. She pressed very hard to have the Animal Clinical Chemistry group brought into the Northeast Regional Meeting. Her efforts opened the door to the wider participation of the Animal group in AACC Regional Meetings. The DACC was able to hold its Sixth Eastern Regional Meeting at the Clinichem 81 Meeting. The Animal group held a symposium on “The Role of Clinical Chemistry and Drug Safety Evaluation” on the afternoon of October 16, 1981. The program was Chaired by Joseph Dooley, PhD, and included the following presentations: Introduction, Joseph Dooley, PhD Toxicity Guidelines: Place of Clinical Pathology Testing, Victor Morganroth, PhD An Evaluation of Clinical Pathology Tests Used for Preclinical Assessment of Drugs and Chemicals, P.A. Govinda Malya, PhD Species Specificity in Application of Clinical Chemistry Toxicity Studies, Walter Loeb, PhD Contributed Papers Of course, that meeting back in 1981 was a success, and to this day, the DACC is an important participant in those rotating regional meetings. Some would even say that the recent turnouts of the Animal group at the Clinichem and (later) the LabMed meetings were a sign that the Animal group is the backbone of the regional meetings right now. The Animal Clinical Chemistry Division went on to sponsor many major scientific symposia. One of the first was at the 31st AACC Annual Meeting in New Orleans in July 1979. The Animal group put on a workshop entitled “Target Organ Toxicity: Kidney” that was approved for Accent® credit by the AACC Committee on Education and included the following: Introduction and Overview, Govinda Malya, PhD (ICI) Laboratory Assessment of Renal Function, J.F. Dooley, PhD (Pfizer Central Research) Comparative Aspects of Physiology and Function of the Kidney, Charles Tate, VMD (Merck Institute) Another major effort was with other local sections of the AACC, known then as the Clinichem 81 Northeastern Regional Conference. The sponsors were the AACC Committee on Animal Clinical Chemistry, the Connecticut Valley Section of the AACC, the New Jersey Section of the AACC, and the New York Metropolitan Section of the AACC. The conference was held October 16–18, 1981, at the New York Sheraton, Seventh Avenue at 56th Street, New York, New York. On Friday, October 16, 1981, the Animal Clinical Chemistry group presented a Symposium entitled “The Role of Clinical Chemistry in Chemical and Drug Safety Testing”. The symposium was chaired by Joseph F. Dooley, PhD, and included the following presentations: Introduction and Overview, Joseph F. Dooley, PhD Toxicity Guidelines: Place of Clinical Pathology Testing, Victor Morganroth, PhD An Evaluation of Pathology Tests Used for Pre-clinical Assessment of Drugs and Chemicals, P.A. Govinda Malya, PhD Species Specificity in the Application of Clinical Chemistry to Toxicity Studies, Walter F. Loeb, DVM, PhD On Monday, July 23, 1983, at the 35th National AACC Meeting, held at the Sheraton Center in New York, the Animal Clinical Chemistry Division presented a symposium entitled “Selection of Tests for Assessment of Hepatotoxicity” that included the following presentations: Comparative Aspects of Hepatic Function in Rats, Dogs and Monkeys, C.E. Cornelius, DVM (Director, California Primate Research Center, University of California Davis) Selection of Tests for Assessment of Hepatotoxicity, J.F. Dooley, PhD (Pfizer Central Research) Enzyme Induction and Hepatotoxicity, P.A. Govinda Malya, PhD (ICI Biomedical Research Department) The next year, The Animal Clinical Chemistry Division sponsored the same symposium at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Society of Toxicology in Atlanta, Georgia, on Monday, March 12, 1984. The year 1981 saw the Animal Clinical Chemistry Division start an active program of participation in international meetings. The Animal group prepared and presented a symposium on animal clinical chemistry at the XI International Congress of the IFCC in Vienna in 1981. In addition, the Animal Clinical Chemistry Division, through J.F. Dooley and Govinda Malya, its chairmen at the time, developed in cooperation with the IFCC Committee on Drug Effects in Clinical Chemistry a series of six papers on “Drug Interferences in Clinical Chemistry”. These were all published in Clinica Chemica Acta and the Journal of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Biochemistry between 1984 and 1988. The Animal Clinical Chemistry Committee, and later the Division, went on to hold several international meetings around the world. Early on, in 1982 and 1983, Drs. Dooley and Malya established a close relationship for the Committee with several key members of the IFCC, including Dr. Gerard Siest. The work done by these committee members led a benchmark series of papers published by the IFCC on the use of chemistry parameters in drug safety testing. In 1990, the organizing committee for the IV ISACB Congress, hosted by the University of California at Davis, was chaired by Jiro J. Keaneko, and the US organizing committee was composed essentially of DACC members. The meeting, held July 19–21, 1990, was a great success. The VI Congress, held at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, August 2–6, 1994, was also heavily attended by DACC members, many of whom presented papers during the meeting. Toxicologic Pathology [1992;20(3, part 2)] published the beginning of a dialog between regulatory scientists and clinical pathologists on the usefulness of clinical pathology data in nonclinical safety studies. The inclusion of the joint DACC-ASVCP Regulatory Task Force’s Clinical Pathology Testing Recommendations for Nonclinical Toxicity and Safety Studies were the direct result of the working group formed at the DACC Workshop at George Washington University. This was truly an international undertaking for the development of internationally harmonized clinical pathology testing recommendations. As time went on, many other valuable members contributed immeasurably to the success of the Animal group. Among so many others, I worked with Jon Kimbal, Pat Carthage, Shirley Satiritz, Don Forman, Tom Reimer, Gary Conner, and John Guba in those days. In 1983, the DACC Chairman was P.A. Govinda Malya. On January 1, 1983, LACAG became the DACC, the first Division of AACC. The efforts of many, in particular the Executive Committee (Don Forman, Jon Kimball, Shirley Satiritz, Edie Williams, Pat Carthage, and John Guba), culminated in the granting of permanent Division status to DACC on July 18, 1987, in San Francisco by the AACC Counsel (House of Delegates). The DACC has grown to >400 members worldwide and serves as a forum for exchange of information by those interested in all aspects of animal clinical laboratory science, including analytical methods, advanced technologies, data management systems, and regulatory issues. Each year the DACC publishes a quarterly newsletter and sponsors symposia at its Spring Meeting and CliniChem, in addition to its activities at the AACC National Meeting. The Clinical Laboratory Meets the Internet: Strategies and Solutions, February 22–23, 2001, Sheraton Biscayne Bay, Miami, FL. Cosponsored by the College of American Pathologists. Information: phone 1-800-892-1400 or 202-857-0717; or access AACC Online athttp://aacc.org/meetings/internet/default.stm . The 24th Annual Arnold O Beckman Conference: The Clinician and Laboratorian: Dynamic Transitions, February 11–12, 2001, Hyatt Newporter, Newport Beach, CA. Information: phone 1-800-892-1400 or 202-857-0717; fax 202-887-5093; or access AACC Online atwww.aacc.org/meetings/beckman/index.stm . Joint Conference and Workshops on Molecular Morphology, February 2–7, 2001, La Fonda Hotel, Santa Fe, NM. Sponsored by International Society for Analytical and Molecular Morphology, The Histochemical Society, and Society for Applied Immunohistochemistry. Information:http://www.isamm.org/santafe2000.htm . Registration:http://www.isamm.org/registration_online_form.htm . Compiled by David E. Bruns, Editor (dbruns@clinchem.aacc.org)

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