Frank J. Dixon
Frank James Dixon ( born March 9, 1920 in Saint Paul ( Minnesota), † February 8, 2008 in San Diego ) was an American immunologist and pathologist.
Life
Dixon studied at the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in 1941 and a medical degree (MD) in 1943. According Internship during a three-year service in the U.S. Navy at the U.S. Naval Hospital, he conducted research at Harvard University in pathology and was from 1948 in the Washington University Medical School. From 1951 he was at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, where he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Pathology. From 1961 he was at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD ), where he at Scripps Clinic and Research Institute (later Scripps Research Institute), the Department of Experimental Pathology founded and led. 1965 to 1968 he was a professor in the Faculty of Biology UCSD ( 1968 Adjunct Professor ). From 1970 he worked at the Scripps Research Institute, the Department of Experimental Pathology, he headed from 1974 and was its director from 1987.
He married Marion Dixon since 1946, had two sons and a daughter, Janet Dixon, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois.
Work
Dixon developed from the 1940s tracer techniques with radioactive iodine to label proteins and thus to follow their path in the body, which he used in studies in immunology. He showed in the 1960s how certain proteins with antibodies form immune complexes ( in the renal glomerulus with ) can clog the kidneys, the fine capillary channels and can lead to kidney failure. He clarified the nature of a number of renal diseases, especially glomerulonephritis, he examined both experimentally and extensively in clinical trials. He also examined the ratio of antigen to antibody for the entry of kidney injury and the role of complement in this process.
Dixon also showed the pathogenic role of these immune complexes in a number of autoimmune diseases such as lupus erythematosus ( SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis as well as in serum sickness.
With Michael BA Oldstone, he examined the late 1960s as a chronic viral infection may trigger an immune response that leads through the formation of immune complexes in kidney diseases and diseases of the vascular system. They showed also that this can happen to the embryo even when transmission of viruses from the mother, which was previously widely doubted.
With colleagues at the Scripps Institute, he bred a mouse ( MRL / 1), which could serve as a model for studying erythematosus, the autoimmune disease lupus (SLE ) ( and rheumatoid arthritis). He pointed the existence of a genetic Vera storage for the training of SLE and the role of a number of factors that could hasten the onset.
At the beginning of his career in the 1950s he coined the testicular tumors.
Awards, Memberships
He has received numerous awards, including the 1969 Gairdner Foundation International Award, the 1975 Dickson Prize in Medicine and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, 1979 Rouse - Whipple Award of the American Association of Pathologists (and their Gold -Headed Cane Award - ), the Parke Davis Award from the American Society of experimental Pathology, 1989 Paul Klemperer Award from the New York Academy of Science and the 1990 Jean Hamburger Award of the International Society of Nephrology. He was a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the New York Academy of Sciences. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and an honorary doctorate from Washington University.
In the years 1970/1971 he was president of the American Association of Immunologists and 1966, the American Association of Pathologists.