Baruch Samuel Blumberg (1925 – 2011), aka Barry Blumberg, was an American physician, geneticist, co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Daniel Carleton Gajdusek), for his work on the hepatitis B virus. He was also the first director of NASA Astrobiology Institute.
He was also president of the American Philosophical Society from 2005 until his death. Blumberg and Gajdusek received the Nobel Prize for discovering “new mechanisms for th
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (1923 – 2008) was an American physician and medical researcher who was the co-recipient (with Baruch S. Blumberg) of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for work on the transmissibility of kuru, implying the existence of an infectious agent, which he named an ‘unconventional virus’.
His papers are held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland and at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Early life and educati
Wolf Szmuness, epidemiologist and former roommate of a future Pope John Paul II, is named in an AIDS origin theory involving his hepatitis B vaccine trials
Wolf Szmuness (1919 – 1982) was a Polish-born epidemiologist who emigrated to and worked in the United States. He conducted research at the New York Blood Center and, from 1
Quadrigen (DPT combined with the Salk polio vaccine) – random notes
In 1959, the Parke-Davis Quadrigen vaccine (DPT combined with the Salk polio vaccine) is licensed. The vaccine is alleged to be particularly reactive because of the effect of the p
The terms immunogen and antigen were not distinguished until 1959
An immunogen is any substance that generates B-cell (humoral/antibody) and/or T-cell (cellular) adaptive immune responses upon exposure to a host organism.[1][2] Imm
Omenn syndrome symptoms are very similar to those of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) due to abnormal T cells that have a specific affinity for self antigens found in the thymus and in the periphery and limited levels of recombination with mutant RAG genes
Omenn syndrome is an autosomal recessive severe combined immunodeficiency. It is associated with hypomorphic missense mutations in immunologically relevant genes of T-cells
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced smallpox variolation – which she called engrafting – to Britain in 1717
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689 – 1762) was an English aristocrat, medical pioneer, writer, and poet. Born in 1689, Lady Mary spent her early life in England. In 1712, Lady
The neonatal fragment crystallizable (Fc) receptor (also FcRn, IgG receptor FcRn large subunit p51, or Brambell receptor) is a protein that in humans is encoded by the FCGRT gene
It is an IgG Fc receptor which is similar in structure to the MHC class I molecule and also associates with beta-2-microglobulin. In rodents, FcRn was originally identified a