HISTORY OF JULES BORDEAUX IDEAS (dedicated to 150 anniversary of the birth of a scientist)

Abstract

The experimental period in the history of immunology as a science can be attributed to the years of scientific activity of the world-famous bacteriologist and immunologist Jules Bordeaux, who was the first to experimentally prove the physicochemical nature of such immune reactions as agglutination, hemolysis, precipitation. He was also involved in revealing the nature of phagocytosis reactions and established the relationship between the virulence of the microorganism and the presence of a capsule and phagocytosis. Owing to the discovery of Jules Bordeaux, mankind became aware of the cytotoxic properties of blood serum. Bordeaux’s scientific heritage was the elucidation of the role of complement in immunological processes, which was proved experimentally during the work of a young scientist at the Pasteur Institute in the laboratory of I. I Mechnikov, who considered J. Bordeaux one of his favorite students. In collaboration with Octave Zhangou, the complement fixation reaction underlying Wasserman’s reaction was first proposed. Bordeaux is well known around the world for the «driving force» of immunity — the connection of antigen to antibody. He can be regarded as one of the founders of the method of serodiagnosis. Bordeaux was the director of the Pasteur Institute in Brussels for 35 years, the world’s only autonomous Pasteur Institute unrelated to Paris. Jules Bordeaux’s scientific legacy continued and became the basis for many epoch-making discoveries in medicine, including the explanation of the mechanisms of anaphylaxis, the study of blood clotting, the discovery of blood groups, etc. The theoretical substantiation of immunological reactions became the beginning of a new diagnostic direction in laboratory practice — immunoassay, which includes thousands of modern laboratory methods