Alick Isaacs

Alick Isaacs ( born July 17, 1921 in Glasgow, † January 26, 1967 in London) was a British virologist and immunologist. He worked from 1950 at the National Institute for Medical Research, where he led the WHO Influenza Centre and from 1961 to 1964 the Department of Bacteriology and Virus Research. His scientific interest was especially infections with influenza viruses. In the course of these studies he discovered in 1957 in collaboration with the Swiss Jean Lindemann substance interferon, and thus the first cytokine.

Life

Alick Isaacs was born in 1921 in Glasgow, the eldest of four children of ethnic Jewish parents and attended from 1939 to 1944 to study medicine at the university. After a year at the Western Infirmary in Glasgow, he became a research assistant at the Department of Bacteriology of the University, where he worked from 1945 to 1947. He then went with a scholarship from the Medical Research Council ( MRC) at the University of Sheffield, where he virology and in particular studies on influenza viruses turned to. In addition, he learned during the time in Sheffield met his wife, with whom he was married from 1949 and later had three children.

With a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship and later with renewed support from the MRC, he spent from 1948 two years at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne during the later Nobel laureate Frank Macfarlane Burnet. He returned in 1950 to his native country and took over the leadership of the WHO Influenza Centre at the National Institute for Medical Research ( NIMR ) in London. Five years later he graduated with honors from the University of Glasgow. From 1961 to 1964 he served as Director of the NIMR Department of Bacteriology and Virology, then there, he headed a research laboratory. At the age of 45, he died in London in 1967 as a result of subarachnoid hemorrhage.

Scientific work

Alick Isaacs published during his career, more than 110 scientific publications and mainly dealt with studies on influenza viruses. Together with the Swiss scientist Jean Lindemann he discovered in 1957 in the virus-infected cell cultures, the endogenous substance interferon. This was around the first known representative of the class of cytokines that control the growth and differentiation of cells and hence are among others, for regulating the immune response and hematopoiesis of central importance. This discovery, which fundamentally influenced both the immunological and virological research in the following years, is considered one of the most important breakthroughs of the 1950s in the biomedical sciences. Alick Isaacs devoted himself after the discovery of interferon, especially the study of its role in the defense against viral infections. More of his work related to the epidemiology of infections with different influenza strains.

Awards

Alick Isaacs was awarded the 1962 an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Leuven. Four years later he was admitted to the Royal Society.