Affiliation:
1. Division of Immunology and Inflammation, Department of Medicine, Imperial College, Hammersmith Campus, Du Cane Road, London W12 0NN, UK
Abstract
‘Quantitative studies on tissue transplantation immunity. III. Actively acquired tolerance’, published in
Philosophical Transactions B
in 1956 by Peter Medawar and his colleagues, PhD graduate Leslie Brent and postdoctoral fellow Rupert Billingham, is a full description of the concept of acquired transplantation tolerance. Their 1953
Nature
paper (Billingham RE
et al
. 1953
Nature
172
, 603–606. (
doi:10.1038/172603a0
)) had provided initial evidence with experimental results from a small number of neonatal mice, with mention of similar findings in chicks. The
Philosophical Transactions B
1956 paper is clothed with an astonishing amount of further experimental detail. It is written in Peter Medawar's landmark style: witty, perceptive and full of images that can be recalled even when details of the supporting information have faded. Those images are provided not just by a series of 20 colour plates showing skin graft recipient mice, rats, rabbits, chickens and duck, bearing fur or plumage of donor origin, but by his choice of metaphor, simile and analogy to express the questions being addressed and the interpretation of their results, along with those of relevant published data and his prescient ideas of what the results might portend. This work influenced both immunology researchers and clinicians and helped to lay the foundations for successful transplantation programmes. It led to the award of a Nobel prize in 1960 to Medawar, and subsequently to several scientists who advanced these areas. This commentary was written to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the journal
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
.
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
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