Judith Campisi (1948–2024)
Authors: Eric Verdin
Journal: Cell Metabolism (2024)

I think the most important part of science is being prepared to be wrong. —Judith Campisi A sense of loss permeates the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California. The monitors throughout campus feature photographs of Professor Judy Campisi, who died on January 19, 2024 after a long illness. Along with the photos are page after page of testimonials sent in from around the country and the world, attesting to the huge impact that she had on peoples' lives and, of course, their science. Judy Campisi was the quintessential "scientist's scientist," respected and admired by all who knew her. She was a brilliant scholar; a truly courageous scientific pioneer; a wonderful collaborator, teacher, and mentor; and an incredible human being. She was the spirit of the Buck Institute, and she will be profoundly missed, not only by researchers at the Buck but by an entire field of study that she created. Indeed, very few people can lay claim to sparking a link between areas that unearthed an entirely new area of inquiry. Dr. Campisi's journey began on Long Island, New York, where she was born, raised, and attended an all-girls Catholic school. She loved laughingly regaling people with her origin story in science, explaining that after her high school experience, she wanted to be around boys, so she decided to major in a scientific field since she thought there would be a lot of them there. Turns out she was right, since she was one of only two women in her 75-person Intro to Chemistry class at the State University of New York (SUNY) Stony Brook. She completed her bachelor's degree at Stony Brook and went on to also earn her PhD in biochemistry there, taking a brief time out in the middle of her undergrad years to travel the country with her sister performing in a folk music band called The Hyper Pipers. While she loved to sing and dance, there was no pursuit on earth that came close to her devotion to science, a passion that she freely shared with all around her. She ultimately became a highly sought mentor and hoped to match the impact on young scientists that her mentor, chemist Arthur Pardee, had on her. Campisi joined Pardee's lab at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston for her postdoc, where she began her work on the causes of cancer. She once told a reporter that it was from Pardee that she learned "just how much fun science can be," comparing it to putting the pieces of a big puzzle together. Following her postdoc, Campisi took her first faculty position at Boston University Medical School, where she began studying senescent cells as a tumor suppression mechanism. Though she had begun her career by studying the causes of cancer, it was at Boston University where she began to realize that aging is the largest risk factor for developing cancer and that cellular senescence, which prevents cancer in young organisms, becomes a detriment in older organisms. Based on this discovery, Campisi went on to publish nearly 500 papers, resulting in approximately 105,000 citations, a towering achievement rarely matched by her peers. In 1991, Campisi moved west to open a lab at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she expanded her groundbreaking work into aging and senescence. In 1999, Campisi and her colleagues were the first to find a marker for senescent cells in living tissue, senescence-associated b-gal, a discovery that would have a lasting impact in the field of research on aging.1Dimri G.P. Lee X. Basile G. Acosta M. Scott G. Roskelley C. Medrano E.E. Linskens M. Rubelj I. Pereira-Smith O. A biomarker that identifies senescent human cells in culture and in aging skin in vivo.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 1995; 92: 9363-9367https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.92.20.9363Crossref PubMed Scopus (6051) Google Scholar They also found that senescent cells may not only foster tissue degeneration but can also stimulate precancerous cells. Campisi became a professor at the Buck Institute in 2002, where she was surrounded by colleagues who shared her passion for research on aging and where she remained until her death. In 2008, she and her colleagues published a paper describing a unique phenotype of senescent cells, the SASP (senescence-associated secretory phenotype).2Coppé J.P. Patil C.K. Rodier F. Sun Y. Muñoz D.P. Goldstein J. Nelson P.S. Desprez P.Y. Campisi J. Senescence-Associated Secretory Phenotypes Reveal Cell-Nonautonomous Functions of Oncogenic RAS and the p53 Tumor Suppressor.PLoS Biol. 2008; 6e301https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060301Crossref PubMed Scopus (2829) Google Scholar It elucidated for the first time the ability of senescent cells to secrete a group of pro-inflammatory molecules and affect the surrounding microenvironment. Today, these molecules are thought to represent one of the primary causes of the chronic inflammation associated with aging. This breakthrough concept is now enshrined in modern biogerontology and led to the idea that elimination of the senescent cells could represent a novel therapeutic target against the chronic diseases of aging. Campisi's singular role in the field of cellular senescence and aging and her global impact was once again demonstrated in a 2014 paper that described the development of a new transgenic mouse, the 3MR mouse.3Demaria M. Ohtani N. Youssef S.A. Rodier F. Toussaint W. Mitchell J.R. Laberge R.M. Vijg J. Van Steeg H. Dollé M.E.T. et al.An Essential Role for Senescent Cells in Optimal Wound Healing through Secretion of PDGF-AA.Dev. Cell. 2014; 31: 722-733Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (1251) Google Scholar In this mouse model, Campisi and her colleagues showed that senescent cells play an essential role in optimal wound healing through the secretion of PDGF-AA. These mice also allowed the specific deletion of senescent cells and the direct demonstration that these cells play a pathogenic role in aging and its associated diseases. The Campisi lab freely shared the 3MR mouse model with hundreds of labs studying senescence, facilitating breakthroughs in senescent biology around the world. The model is still heavily used and cited. Campisi also played an essential role in the National Institutes of Health's establishment of the Cellular Senescence Network (SenNet) in 2022, formed to make the characterization and detection of senescent cells a priority to potentially be targeted with therapeutics. The Buck Institute, represented by Campisi along with Buck colleagues Birgit Schilling and Simon Melov, was one of the inaugural 13 recipients of a SenNet grant, receiving more than $12 million to identify and characterize senescent cells in human ovaries, breast tissue, and skeletal muscle. When Campisi began her scientific career, she surely would not have foreseen her discoveries being transformed into potential therapies in the clinic. But as the field reached an inflection point where discovery research moved to human clinical trials, Campisi found herself at the forefront of this new field of senolytics: drugs that specifically induce killing of senescent cells. As one of the founders of Unity Biotechnology, together with this pioneering company, she aspired to develop transformative medicines (senolytics). The company is currently in clinical trials for a number of medical indications linked to aging. For her inestimable contributions to scientific research and medicine, Campisi was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She was also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Campisi was perennially included in the annual Highly Cited Researchers list (top 1% of citations worldwide) compiled by Clarivate. She received international recognition and numerous awards for her research, including two MERIT awards from the National Institute on Aging and awards from the AlliedSignal Corporation, Gerontological Society of America, and American Federation for Aging Research. She was a recipient of the Longevity Prize from the IPSEN Foundation, the Bennett Cohen Award from the University of Michigan, the Schober Award from Halle University, and the international Olav Thon Foundation Prize in Natural Sciences and Medicine. Campisi also served on advisory committees for the Alliance for Aging Research, the Progeria Research Foundation, and NIA's Intervention Testing Program. She was also an editorial board member for more than a dozen peer-reviewed journals. She further served on the scientific advisory boards of numerous biotech companies, including Geron Corporation, Sierra BioScience, and Sangamo Biosciences. Despite all the accolades, awards, and accomplishments, for Campisi it was always all about the painstaking work of science and the magic of discovery. In conversation with Gordon Lithgow, host of the Buck podcast "We're Not Getting Any Younger … Yet" in 2022, she explained the most critical part of a scientist's mission:I think the most important part of science is being prepared to be wrong. You set up a hypothesis. I preach this constantly to my lab. If you prove your hypothesis is wrong, and you're really good, that's great, we learned something. Don't worry, and be prepared to see something that you were totally unprepared for. That's fine. And then you scratch your head a little bit and come up with new ideas. She was a truly exemplary colleague, a loved mentor, and a true pioneer. Thanks to her immeasurable contributions, new ideas will continue to flow. She will be missed by all of us who had the chance to work and interact with her.