Professor Ralph Steinman was the 2011 recipient of the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine. He was also the first person to be conferred the prize after his death which had unfortunately happened 3 days before the award was declared.
But more important than his death was his life--a life for which the whole world of Immunology and Medicine must be thankful for, a life for whom every new dendritc cell based vaccine recipient must be thankful for.
Professor Steinman was conferred the Nobel Prize almost 40 years after his discovery of the dendritic cell whilst peering through the microscope looking at accessory cells in a mouses spleen.
Prof. Steinman, then a post doc fellow at Prof Zanvil Cohn's lab at the Rockefeller Institute, New York, was trying to figure out the missing piece to the jigsaw in antigen delivery and T cell activation. Prevailing belief was that the Macrophages were responsible but research could not validate that premise. It was at this juncture that Prof. Zanvil Cohn and Steinman decided to do some basic research. They came across this strange spindly armed cell, which looked very much like a trees branches that they decided to call it the dendritic cell.
Over the next 20 years Prof. Steinman and his team worked doggedly on the dendritic cell and its functions, initially purifying it and then discovering its role in T cell activation and so on. At one time they were probably the only team in the world working on it. And at times their initial studies were neglected and put aside. But all this changed when the world came to realize the quintessential role that the Dendritic cells play in our Immune System.
In todays world Prof. Steinman has been instrumental in paving the way for Dendritic cell based vaccines which are more target oriented and specific than conventional chemotherapy.
George Bernard Shaw once said "Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal".
Prof. Steinman can be credited as being a man who doggedly pursued his goal, always believing that he has not yet reached it. His life and death is testimony of sciences true quest for the truth.
But more important than his death was his life--a life for which the whole world of Immunology and Medicine must be thankful for, a life for whom every new dendritc cell based vaccine recipient must be thankful for.
Professor Steinman was conferred the Nobel Prize almost 40 years after his discovery of the dendritic cell whilst peering through the microscope looking at accessory cells in a mouses spleen.
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Zanvil Cohn (left) and
Ralph Steinman (right) examining data
Fig 2. Nature Medicine 13, 1155 - 1159 (2007)
Published online: 17 September 2007 |
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Phase
Contrast of a Dendritic cell from Spleen
Fig 3. Nature Medicine 13, 1155 - 1159 (2007)
Published online: 17 September 2007 |
In todays world Prof. Steinman has been instrumental in paving the way for Dendritic cell based vaccines which are more target oriented and specific than conventional chemotherapy.
George Bernard Shaw once said "Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal".
Prof. Steinman can be credited as being a man who doggedly pursued his goal, always believing that he has not yet reached it. His life and death is testimony of sciences true quest for the truth.
