Brigitte Askonas
Brigitte " Ita " Alice Askonas ( born April 1, 1923 in Vienna, † 9 January 2013) was a British immunologist born in Austria, which was primarily concerned with the formation of antibodies and cellular immunology.
Life
Brigitte Askonas studied biochemistry at McGill University (Bachelor in 1944, Master in 1946, where it operated biochemical research in psychiatry ) and was in 1949 at Cambridge University, where she received her doctorate in 1952 with Malcolm Dixon (via muscle enzymes). She was from 1952 a scientist at the UK's National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill in London, first in the biochemistry department and with its founding in 1957 in the Department of Immunology under its first director, John Humphrey. 1976 to 1988 she was head of immunology in Mill Hill. In addition, it was 1961/62 in a sabbatical year at Harvard University ( Department of Microbiology at Mahlon Hoagland ), 1971/72 at the newly founded Institute for Immunology in Basel, 1989-1994 Visiting Professor at St Mary 's Hospital Medical School. From 1995 she was a visiting professor at Imperial College, where she is a Fellow since 2000. Since 1989 it is connected in Oxford with the group of Molecular Immunology, Institute of Molecular Medicine at the John Radcliffe Hospital.
1957 she succeeded in the cloning of B cells in vivo. It dealt mainly with the later mechanism, such as T- cell antigens can be recognized. She has worked not only with the typical experimental antigens of virology, but also with real pathogens. They fully realized the killer T cells recognize regardless of the subtype of the virus of influenza virus -infected host cells. This also has implications for the development of new vaccines that were previously based on antibodies, all of which are specific for certain subtypes of influenza virus. They also examined how trypanosomes suppress the immune system response.
It was in this context, one of the first, the cloned T cells, and thus pioneered as before in the cloning of B cells.
Among her students and post - doctoral students in Mill Hill include Michael Bevan, Andrew McMichael, Emil Unanue. Influenced you in 1971 in Basel and later Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa, who was still inexperienced in immunology.
She was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1973 ), whose vice president she was 1989/90, and a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences (2007). In 2007 she received the Robert Koch Medal, 1973 Feldberg Foundation Prize. In 1994 she became an honorary member of the German Society of Immunology, 1988, the British Society of Immunology, 1989, the French Society of Immunology and 1977, the American Society of Immunology. In 1987 she became an honorary doctorate from McGill University and from 1982 to 1987 she was an honorary professorship at the University of Warwick. She was Honorary Fellow of the Cambridge colleges New Hall and Girton. 1998 she was a Founding Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
She also worked in various committees of WHO, among others, long years in the immunology of leprosy.
For the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, she wrote several biographical obituaries from immunologists ( Niels Kaj Jerne, César Milstein, John Herbert Humphrey ).