Eugene Bell, 88, biotech leader in creating human tissue

Years of meticulous research came to fruition for Eugene Bell more than a quarter-century ago when he mixed human cells, collagen, and other ingredients to create a skin-like tissue that could be grafted onto severely injured patients, such as those who had been badly burned.

"We've come across a very interesting phenomenon," Dr. Bell told the Globe in 1980. "The nice part is that we can make as much skin as we want to. . . . We could grow enough skin to treat my whole body."

Already in his late 50s when he made that breakthrough in his lab at MIT, Dr. Bell went on to found two biotechnology companies and most recently had been conducting stem cell research involving adult body cells. He died June 22 after suffering a heart attack in his Boston home. Dr. Bell was 88 and had worked in his lab the day before.

"He founded a whole field out of tissue engineering, namely out of taking basic cell biology and translating it into the clinic to help patients," said Dr. Gerald Weissmann, a research professor of medicine at New York University. "He's known as the father of tissue engineering."

Outside the lab, Dr. Bell led a vigorous life of the body and the mind. In the early 1940s he married Millicent Lang, whom he had met when they were students at New York University. She became a scholar whose books included works on Henry James and William Shakespeare -- topics that were as much a part of their conversation as his groundbreaking research.

"We lived a life of shared interests in every way," she said.

Those interests included swimming, which they pursued in Buzzard s Bay off Cape Cod as recently as last summer, and in the pool at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during winters.

"Gene and I loved swimming," she said. "We would always be seen taking our daily mile swim in Buzzards Bay, and everyone on the beach would watch to see if we were OK. In the winter we would swim in the MIT pool. We swam in adjoining lanes and did our 40 minutes or so."

Dr. Bell was born in New York City and grew up in the Bronx, graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School. While he majored in math and physics at New York University, a class in another discipline proved to be life-changing.

"He sat in back of me in a philosophy class. We didn't speak to each other immediately, but after a while we got to know each other. We were very shy," his wife said, laughing.

They married when they were sophomores, just before he interrupted his studies to volunteer for the Army during World War II. He served in the Pacific and was wounded during the war, his wife said.

He graduated from NYU after the war, then received a master's from the University of Rhode Island and a doctorate from Brown University. Dr. Bell joined the faculty at MIT in 1956.

"It was his first and only academic job," his wife said. "He never went anywhere else."

His work on tissue engineering at MIT "was a major achievement," Weissmann said, "and it paved the way for a lot of bioengineering at MIT and elsewhere."

"Gene was a pioneer in applied cell culture, that is to say culturing cells that can then be used for other applications," said Alexander Rich, the Sedgwick professor of biophysics at MIT.

In 2003, Rich and Dr. Bell each received the Biotechnology Achievement of the Year Award from the New York University School of Medicine for their respective fields of research.

"He had a wry wit and he frequently came up with things that I found very interesting," Rich said. "He liked to look at, shall I say, things that perhaps were not obvious to everybody."

Beginning in 1979, Dr. Bell's early experiments with engineering tissue led to what he called "skin-equivalents," which he was able to grow in sheets, tubes, and other shapes so that they could be used for purposes such as surface skin, blood vessels, or organ tissue. Because cells from the patient are integrated into the tissue, the surface skin application allowed grafting without rejection by the patient's immune system and with little scarring.

"He transformed his understanding of basic cell biology," said Weissmann, who is director of the Biotechnology Study Center at NYU. Dr. Bell's research, he said, allowed "him to understand how the molecules that permitted cells to adhere to surfaces could be used to engineer large surfaces that could serve as tissues or organs. Essentially these molecules work as a form of intercellular stitches and he worked out the geometry of the stiches."

Dr. Bell retired from MIT in 1986 and founded Organogenesis, a Cambridge company that marketed the discoveries he had made at MIT. He served as president, chief scientific officer, and board chairman of the company, leaving in 1991 to return briefly to MIT.

Then he founded TEI Biosciences Inc. of Boston, serving at different times as chief executive officer, president, chief science officer, and a board member. He also had been a corporation member of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, where last year Dr. Bell and his wife established a $400,000 endowed fellowship fund in tissue engineering.

Although Dr. Bell was a scientist, "he had a philosophic perspective on his field, what it signified, what it meant for mankind," his wife said. "He had large ideas as well as very specific concrete research topics."

"He was a broad, generous, cultivated individual who could be counted on in both a general or scientific conversation to refer to Shakespeare or Trotsky, depending on what the image was," Weissman said. "He was a political progressive and a connoisseur in the nicest sense of the word. He was not a sniffer of brandy, but he was a Shakespearean appreciator of good wine and thought."

In addition to his wife, Dr. Bell leaves a son, Tony of Seattle; a daughter, Meg Fofonoff of Dedham; and four grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. Aug. 19 at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.