Medawar's legacy to cellular immunology and clinical transplantation: a commentary on Billingham, Brent and Medawar (1956) 'Quantitative studies on tissue transplantation immunity. III. Actively acquired tolerance'

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences
Elizabeth Simpson

Abstract

'Quantitative studies on tissue transplantation immunity. III. Actively acquired tolerance', published in Philosophical Transactions B in 1956 by Peter Medawar and his colleagues, PhD graduate Leslie Brent and postdoctoral fellow Rupert Billingham, is a full description of the concept of acquired transplantation tolerance. Their 1953 Nature paper (Billingham RE et al. 1953 Nature 172, 603-606. (doi:10.1038/172603a0)) had provided initial evidence with experimental results from a small number of neonatal mice, with mention of similar findings in chicks. The Philosophical Transactions B 1956 paper is clothed with an astonishing amount of further experimental detail. It is written in Peter Medawar's landmark style: witty, perceptive and full of images that can be recalled even when details of the supporting information have faded. Those images are provided not just by a series of 20 colour plates showing skin graft recipient mice, rats, rabbits, chickens and duck, bearing fur or plumage of donor origin, but by his choice of metaphor, simile and analogy to express the questions being addressed and the interpretation of their results, along with those of relevant published data and his prescient ideas of what the results might porte...Continue Reading

References

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Citations

Jan 12, 2019·Critical Reviews in Clinical Laboratory Sciences·Eberhard Buse, Udo R Markert
Dec 19, 2018·Transplant International : Official Journal of the European Society for Organ Transplantation·Haruki KatsumataKazunari Tanabe
Dec 24, 2015·Immunology·Leslie Brent
Aug 31, 2020·Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology·Denis Noble
May 4, 2021·Frontiers in Immunology·Jeng-Chang Chen
May 8, 2021·European Journal of Immunology·Herman Waldmann
Dec 3, 2015·Current Opinion in Organ Transplantation·Lori J West

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
X-ray
electron
transgenic
gene knockout

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