The discovery of T cell–B cell cooperation

GENERAL COMMENTARY ARTICLE

Front. Immunol., 24 October 2014 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2014.00377

N. Avrion Mitchison*

• University College London, London, UK

A commentary on

The carrier effect in the secondary response to hapten-protein conjugates. II. cellular cooperation
by Mitchison NA. Eur J Immunol (1971) 1:18–27. doi:10.1002/eji.1830010103

Until the mid-twentieth century, immunology had been very much a matter of soluble antibodies and their effect on the antigens of bacteria and viruses. Then, in the wartime and post-war years, a new area opened, of cell-mediated immunity, driven initially by interest in the ubiquitous rejection of homografts in man and animals. Experimental tolerance was a key discovery, that introducing donor-type cells before the ability to reject homografts had developed could prevent the rejection. Hašek in Czechoslovakia made the discovery independently in 1953 and by Billingham, Brent, and Medawar in Britain in 1954.........

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