In 1973, while working as a young post-doc in Zanvil A. Cohn's laboratory in Rockefeller University,
Ralph Steinman described a completely new immune cell within the lymphoid organs of mice (original paper can be read
here). Based on it's distinctive shape, with it's many branched projections, he named the cell "
dendritic cell" (derived from the Greek word for "tree").
Such began a
prolific and
illustrious career, devoted to the further understanding of these cells, which transformed the way the world understood how the immune system worked. Yesterday,
Dr Steinman was awarded the The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2011 "
for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity". Tragically,
he had died just three days earlier of pancreatic cancer, and never learned that he was to be awarded science’s top honour.
[more inside]
posted by kisch mokusch
on Oct 4, 2011 -
25 comments
Henrietta Lacks, a Baltimore housewife, died in 1951.
Some of her cells did not die. In fact, had they been allowed to grow unchecked, they
would have taken over the world by now. As it is, even as they proved invaluable to medical researchers, their baffling ability to regenerate resulted in contamination of three decades of cellular research, costing medical researchers millions of dollars. As far as science can tell, Henrietta's cells will never die.
Creepy!
posted by stupidsexyFlanders
on Oct 10, 2002 -
29 comments
