The French Society for Cell Biology celebrates its 40th anniversary this year!

The French Society for Cell Biology (SBCF) is actively involved in communicating the latest advances and organizing scientific events, as well as supporting young researchers, in this field. The SBCF also supports and organizes outreaching activities designed to raise public awareness of science in general and cell biology in particular. The Society, in its present form, was founded in 1984. To mark this milestone, we are organizing a memorable symposium hosted by the Académie des Sciences (https://sbcf.fr/en/event/symposium-des-40-ans-de-la-sbcf/) on September 10, 2024. The French Society for Cell Biology (SBCF) gathers all researchers working in the broad field of Cell Biology (https://sbcf.fr/en/). To date, there are 2400 members of the society, representing 426 teams affiliated. The society is actively involved in several missions. Indeed, from communicating about the latest breakthroughs to organizing scientific events, the SBCF also digs up new talents and financially supports young researchers to help them attend upcoming meetings. The Society's goal is to promote the scientific area, to boost knowledge transmission and be the reference for French research in Cell Biology abroad. The SBCF is also very much dedicated to support and organize events for raising the public awareness of science in general and cell biology in particular, via so called outreach activities. The Society with its current status was created in 1984. So, it is now time to celebrate its 40th anniversary, and to mark this milestone, we wish to organize a memorable symposium hosted by the French Academy of Sciences (https://sbcf.fr/en/event/symposium-des-40-ans-de-la-sbcf/). This special event will be held on September 10, 2024 and offers an exciting program around top topics in the field. Most of the former presidents and the current president of the SBCF will share their work and their vision on how the field has evolved and how the community might embrace the many challenges faced in our days and beyond. One may wonder how this Society was created and indeed, it has been a lengthy gestation with a multi-step process outlined in the text written for the Society website by Andrée Tixier-Vidal, one of the former presidents of SBCF well renowned for her work on hormonal secretion and neural morphogenesis (https://sbcf.fr/en/la-sbcf/history/). The establishment of the SBCF, as we recognize it today, traces back to the year 1984, but had started before, concomitantly with the advent of electron microscopy, which paved the way for modern Cell Biology. Indeed, in the beginning was the « Société Française de Microscopie Electronique » (SFME). The SFME was founded in 1959, and its first President, Raimond Castaing, was a physicist. Subsequently, a succession of physicists and biologists served as Presidents, just as they do today for the Société Française des Microscopies (SFμ). SFME's annual meetings were lively, with highly debated discussions, hence quite enriching for young and less young researchers, and reflecting the rapid advancements in tissue preparation techniques and knowledge. The « Société Française de Biologie Cellulaire » was born out of the SFME and officially founded in 1983. How did this process unfold? The creation of the Cercle Français de Biologie Cellulaire (CFBC) was preceded by a letter from the late Prof Couteaux, dated March 3, 1975: The Council of the Société Française de Microscopie Electronique proposed to gather in a circle all those interested in Cell Biology and related disciplines. This circle could benefit from the SFME's administrative infrastructure, and in particular its secretariat, which efficiently organized scientific meetings and the publication of scientific works, including a periodical. A provisional committee chaired by Nicole Le Douarin was set up. The vice-president was Janine Yon, and the secretaries Michel Bouteille, Pierre Favard, and Roger Robineaux. The 12 members of the scientific committee came from a wide range of scientific backgrounds: immunology, biochemistry and molecular biology, developmental biology, genetics, oncology, cytology, pharmacology, neurobiology, photobiology, biophysics, virology… The objectives included organizing regular meetings, maintaining close links with existing societies and reshaping the "Journal de Microscopie" into the "Journal de Microscopie et de Biologie Cellulaire" (1975). A project specifying the aims of the circle was circulated to SFME members, along with a registration form listing the discipline and research topic. The first CFBC meetings were held in 1976: a genetics symposium was organized in Marseille in May, and a broader meeting on membrane receptors in Paris in September. Legally, the CFBC was a section of the SFME created in june 1959, and Nicole Le Douarin was elected as President. Scientists strongly supported the CFBC activities as attested by the success of the 1976 and 1977 meetings which each attracted around 200 participants. At the same time, the first issue of the Journal de Microscopie et de Biologie Cellulaire (renamed "Biologie Cellulaire" in 1977 and finally "Biology of the Cell" in 1981) was prepared, with a new International Scientific Committee, under the auspices of the European Cell Biology Organization (ECBO). These successes led the CFBC to further extend its activities to the European level. At the suggestion of W. Bernhard, who was a member of the ECBO Executive Committee, in 1977 the Cercle joined the ECBO, which had just reformed its structure from a Society to a Federation of Cell Biology Societies recently created in several European countries. At the suggestion of John Paul, President of ECBO, he also organized the first European Cell Biology Congress, in Paris, July 19–24, 1982 with François Gros and P. Favard as chairmen of the Organizing Committee. The Congress was attended by some 1600 participants (900 foreigners and 700 French). The CFBC also established contacts with the European Tissue Culture Society, of which Andrée Tixier-Vidal was General Secretary and which was also being reorganized under the aegis of John Paul. An inventory of French laboratories practicing the various approaches to tissue and eukaryotic cell culture was drawn up in 1979. The transformation of the CFBC into a Society was proposed in 1981 by the Board of the SFME, on the belief that the circle members would achieve financial independence. The year 1982 was devoted to preparing the articles of association and relations with the "parent" company. In the end, the project of a Federation grouping SFME, Société Française de Biologie Clinique (SFBC) and possibly other companies or circles was adopted. The Federation was named after the renowned ultrastructuralist Wilhelm Bernhard who died in 1978. The creation and statutes of the SFBC were approved at the Cercle's General Meeting on September 21, 1983. The SFBC's lifespan was short! Indeed, at the request of the SFBC, created earlier, it had to change its name to: « Société de Biologie Cellulaire de France » (SBCF) (December 15, 1984). At the same time, new elections had set up the first Board and the first Scientific Council, of which François Gros was elected as President. The scientific objectives remained those of the initial CFBC. The journal Biology of the Cell, established jointly by the French Societies of Cell Biology and of Microscopies, publishes original research articles, methods papers, reviews, and commentaries covering cellular and molecular biology, developmental biology, cell physiology, and evolution. During the past 40 years, the SBCF has witnessed the evolution of fluorescence microscopy, with its ever-increasing resolution, contributing to bridge the gap with electron microscopy. The introduction of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) and all derivatives to tag proteins in the late 1990s marked a revolution in the field, making possible to detect and monitor the intracellular fate of a given or more proteins in living cells in an unprecedented way, and thus to decode many cell functions. Over the last decades, the cell biologists do not only study cells as building blocks of all living organisms, but also as parts of more complex intertwined and dynamic systems: the tissue micro-environment in which most cells transiently or stably reside was shown to provide key biochemical and biomechanical cues that directly imprint cell differentiation and functions. This has been accompanied by the emerging interest for the discipline of tissue engineering including the innovative advent of miniaturized tissues that recapitulate as closely as possible the physiological tissue environment. This explosive area of research combined with new gene-editing tools drastically enlarge our capacities to study a variety of homeostatic or dysfunctional cell/tissue model systems which holds great promise for uncovering fundamental processes in healthy, aging and diseased cells including during tumorigenesis or viral and microbial infection. They should also spawn major breakthrough applications with in first place, regenerative and personalized medicine. In the same vein, astonishing progress in handling untransformed primary cells as well as inducible pluripotent stem cells in adults and embryos in conjunction with the power of gene-editing have brought long-awaited breakthrough in cell specificities, fate and functions, and will undoubtedly uncover much more. In addition, the cryo-EM revolution and the emerging possibility to "see" biological macromolecules at near-atomistic resolution in intact cells, that is, by cryogenic electron tomography combined with subtomogram averaging, constitutes an unvaluable asset to the field of cell biology. With these interdisciplinary motivations and challenges, the field has also constantly evolved to benefit from interactions with theoretical and experimental physicists, but also with organic and inorganic chemists, or biochemists, thereby enriching the available toolbox as well as the formalization and modeling of cellular processes. It now takes the challenge of optimally integrating the power of artificial intelligence in the experimental design and execution steps, as well as for data analysis. We would like to thank all the members of the Society and in particular members of the board and former presidents who successfully managed the Society's activity as well as the journal Biology of the Cell over the years. In the future, we want to share our passion for cell biology research even more, to continue bridging disciplines as a way to gain strength in our programs, and promote the scientific approach to the general public including the youth. As a 40-year-old lady, SBCF expresses its dynamic creativity and activities with an unaltered enthusiasm and even greater success! Happy birthday to the SBCF! If you are not yet a member, please do not hesitate to join us (https://sbcf.fr/en/la-sbcf/)! Florence Niedergang, president (2022–2024) and Isabelle Tardieux president (2024–2026) of SBCF, adapted from a text written by Andrée Tixier-Vidal, (president, 1990–1991) (https://sbcf.fr/en/la-sbcf/history/). F.N. research is supported by CNRS, INSERM and Université Paris Cité. I.T. research is supported by CNRS, INSERM and Université Grenoble Alpes. We thank Jean-Marc Verbavatz (Institut Jacques Monod, Paris and President of the Société Française des Microscopies) for his careful reading of the manuscript. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.