- Person
- Baruj Benacerraf
- Lived
- 1920–2011
- Field
- Immunology
- From
- Venezuelan-born American
The story
Baruj Benacerraf was born in Caracas in 1920 to a Sephardic Jewish family with roots in Morocco and Algeria. He was refused by numerous American medical schools in 1942, an experience he attributed to his ethnic and foreign background, until a friend’s father helped him win a place at the Medical College of Virginia. After serving as an army doctor he became an immunologist, first in New York and Paris and then at New York University.
At NYU he immunised genetically varied guinea pigs with simple synthetic antigens, chemical groups attached to chains of the amino acid lysine, and noticed that the animals fell into two groups: responders and non-responders. He showed that the ability to respond was inherited and controlled by dominant genes, which he called immune response, or Ir, genes. With colleagues at NYU and at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he joined in 1968, he showed that these genes lie within the major histocompatibility complex, the same gene region that determines whether transplanted tissue is accepted or rejected.
The Nobel committee, which awarded Benacerraf, Jean Dausset and George Snell the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, said that his work showed that genes closely linked to tissue type regulate the interaction among immune cells and the strength of immune reactions. It explained why different people have different capacities to fight infections and why some are predisposed to certain diseases. In the committee’s words, the area of research he opened allowed scientists to analyse why individuals vary in their ability to mount immune responses to infection.
The practical importance of this gene region is greatest in transplantation. The Nobel presentation speech called tissue typing indispensable for all forms of tissue and organ transplantation, and the committee reported that 90 to 100 percent of kidney transplants between siblings with identical tissue types succeeded. Benacerraf went on to chair pathology at Harvard and from 1980 to 1992 to lead the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
Why it matters
Knowledge of how tissue-type genes control immunity underpins donor matching for organ and bone marrow transplants and research on autoimmune disease.
About Baruj Benacerraf
Sephardic Jewish immunologist who found the immune response genes that decide how strongly each person reacts to infection, transplants and disease. Nobel Prize 1980; led Dana-Farber.
Sources
- Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1980 NobelPrize.org
- Award ceremony speech, The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1980 NobelPrize.org
- Baruj Benacerraf, Biographical NobelPrize.org
- Baruj Benacerraf Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.