CME INDIA Presentation by ⚜ Dr. M. Gowri Sankar, MD, Senior Assistant Professor, Dept. of General Medicine, Government Medical College and ESI Hospital, Coimbatore.
Today’s History Feature:
Dr. Jean Dausset
(Oct 18, 1916 – Jun 6, 2009)
💠French Immunologist
His contributions…
🔸Dausset studied medicine at the University of Paris. His father was a physician and he took part in the First World War. Dausset was quite impressed by his father so he wanted to follow his footsteps.
🔸Unfortunately his study was interrupted due to Second World War. Hence, he was sent to serve in French Army. He was posted in North Italy and served there for a year.
🔸Initially he was assigned at an Ambulance Service. Thereby he performed many blood transfusions of wounded soldiers. Ultimately, he studied the transfusion related reactions.
🔸After the Second World War, he completed his MD and was then appointed as a Director of Laboratory at National Blood Transfusion Centre. He worked there for the next 23 years.
🔸During his research, he was the first to demonstrate Leuco-agglutination and Thrombo-agglutination in 1952.
🔸Subsequently, an American Geneticist Dr. George Snell, had discovered Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) in mice.
🔸Dr. Dausset’s discovery in1958 became an essential contribution in identifying the MHC in Humans. He was the first to reveal the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) and named it as HLA-A2.
🔸By using of MHC / HLA, Dr. Dausset went on to find the matching possibility of organ donors and the recipients. Thereby the incidence of transplant related rejections reduced drastically.
🔸Eventually, Dr. Dausset was honoured with the shared Nobel Prize of Medicine with Dr. George Snell and Dr. Baruj for their contributions to Immunology.
🔸Dr. Dausset granted his Nobel Prize money to begin the Centre for the Study of Human Polymorphisms (CEPH), later it was renamed as Foundation Jean Dausset – CEPH, a Human Genome Centre in 1984.
🔸His contribution in Immunology have reached far beyond transplantation. Nowadays, our scientists are building up the relationship of HLA with autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases and various cancers.
A Day to Commemorate…
The Physician Who Transformed the Understanding of Human Immune System
Dr. Jean Dausset 🙏🏼
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