Jean Dausset

Jean Baptiste Gabriel Joachim Dausset (* October 19, 1916 in Toulouse, † June 6, 2009 in Palma, Spain) was a French physician and hematologist mainly focused on immunology and transplantation medicine. He received the 1977 Robert Koch Prize and in 1980 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Baruj Benacerraf and together with George Davis Snell for the discovery of genetically determined cellular surface structures that immunological reactions are controlled.

Biography

Jean Dausset was born in 1916 as the son of a doctor and attended high school Michelet in Vanves in Paris. He then studied at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and went in 1937 to a municipal hospital in the city, where he worked as a junior doctor. In 1939 he was drafted into the army and served in a medical corps. The doctorate in 1945, transfusion medicine, after which he specialized in hematology, ie the study of the blood.

In 1946 he was appointed director of the French National Blood Transfusion Centre in Paris, where he remained until 1962, after which there was a calling for the Department of Hematology at the University of Paris. From 1969 to 1977 he was professor of immuno- hematology at the Faculty Lariboisière -Saint -Louis and 1968-1984 also Director of the Research Division of Immunogenetics at the National Medical Research Institute. From 1978 to 1988 he was Professor of Experimental Medicine at the Collège de France. In 1977 he was awarded a Gairdner Foundation International Award.

With the prize money for the Nobel Prize, which he received in 1980, founded the Centre d' Etude du Dausset Polymorphisme Humain ( CEPH ) have been applied to the studies of the human genome. The Research Institute collected DNA from 61 large families, she asked researchers to decode the genome available. In addition, he founded France Transplants and France Bone Marrow grafts, two companies, which catered to the acquisition of organ donors. In 1993, the CEPH became the Foundation Jean Dausset - CEPH -, Dausset stepped down as President of the Foundation in 2003 and remained an honorary professor until his death. He died on June 6, 2009 in Palma, Majorca, Spain, at the age of 92 years.

Work

Jean Dausset and his two excellent colleagues with him dealt decisively with the immunological compatibility of tissues after transplantation. Benacerraf, Dausset and Snell have demonstrated in their experiments that these immune factors are genetically fixed. They are largely responsible for ensuring that it is experimentally possible to study these factors, as they were able to show that even on the white blood cells, leukocytes are the same factors as in other body cells. This allowed an immune system factors are developed, which similar to the blood group systems and works with the defense reactions can be carried out by testing the patient's blood already.

Dausset, and Benacerraf employed in parallel to the elucidation of the biochemical key molecules in this histocompatibility complex, while as geneticists Snell identified especially the genes that were responsible for the acceptance and rejection of exogenous tissue.