Harald von Boehmer

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Harald von Boehmer

Harald von Boehmer (born November 30, 1942 in Guben ; † June 24, 2018 ) was a German physician , biologist , immunologist and professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School . He was a recognized researcher, especially in the field of T lymphocytes .

Life

Harald von Boehmer, son of the murdered resistance fighter from July 20, 1944 and general staff officer Hasso von Boehmer and his wife Käthe nee Torhorst (1911–2019), studied medicine at the universities of Göttingen , Freiburg and Munich and graduated in 1968 with a doctorate medicine. This was followed by years of study at the University of Melbourne / Australia in biology, as well as research activities at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, which he completed in 1974 with his second PhD in biology. From 1973 to 1996 he was a member of the Institute for Immunology Basel and in the meantime was habilitated at the University of Basel as a private lecturer in immunology. In addition to a visiting professorship at the University of Florida (from 1982 to the present day) and after working as a visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (1987), von Boehmer was appointed Professor of Immunology at Basel University in 1991. Just one year later he accepted a position as research director at the National Institute for Science and Medical Research ( INSERM ) in Paris and from 1997 to 2000 he headed the research department INSERM 373 as director. From 1993 to 2000 he took over a professorship for immunology at the Faculté de Médicine Necker Enfants Malades and became a faculty member at the University of Descartes . In 1996 he finished his work in Basel and moved to Paris. In 1997 he was elected to the Institut Universitaire de France as "Membre Senior". Finally, in 1999, he took over a professorship for pathology at Harvard Medical School and became a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University / Cambridge / USA. In Boston , he headed the Lymphocyte Biology Laboratory at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute .

After his retirement , Harald von Boehmer took over a visiting professorship at the Institute for Immunology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich in January 2013 . In February 2013, Harald von Boehmer, Professor in the Department of Cancer Immunology & AIDS, Harvard Medical School (USA), received the Helmholtz International Fellow Award for his excellent work in the field of immunology, after he was awarded by the Helmholtz Center Munich in January 2013 - German Research Center for Health and Environment had been nominated.

Research priorities

Harald von Boehmer researched the role of T lymphocytes in the immune system. In particular, he investigated the role of the alpha and beta T cell receptors (TCR) in the recognition of MHC- peptide complexes, also known as MHC-restricted antigen recognition . Accordingly, with the transfer of TCR alpha and beta genes from one T cell clone to another, the MHC-restricted specificity is also transferred, which means that the MHC-restricted antigen recognition takes place through a receptor. The adaptation of the immune system to the body's own tissue was investigated using T-cell receptors in transgenic mice. It was shown that the positive and negative selection of immature T cells in the thymus by the body's own peptide-MHC complexes play a decisive role. These experiments also aimed to clarify the role of TCR binding to MHC I or MHC II peptide complexes in the intrathymic differentiation of CD8 killer cells or CD4 helper cells, which turned out to be essential. Further studies dealt with the identification, structure and function of the pre-T-cell receptor and its influence on the survival and differentiation of immature T-cells with productive TCR-beta gene rearrangements.

In addition, von Boehmer investigated the generation and function of regulatory T cells, which play an essential role in preventing autoimmunity , with the aim of using the ability of these cells to prevent unwanted immune reactions.

Harald von Boehmer was a "highly cited researcher" ( Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) 2003). His work on the intrathymic selection of immature T cells was presented in the "Great Experiments" issue, which lists the most important contributions of the 20th century to the understanding of biology in the molecular and cellular fields .

Honors

Works (selection)

  • On the effect of factors from human serum on the electrophoretic mobility of mammalian cells ; Munich, 1968
  • T cell hybridomas: a workshop at the Basel Institute for Immunology ; Berlin [u. a.]: Springer, 1982
  • T cell clones ; Amsterdam [u. a.]: Elsevier, 1985
  • Immune defense ; Heidelberg [u. a.]: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, 1995

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Obituary. Funeral Home Ing. Dr. Karl Neurauter, accessed on July 4, 2018 .
  2. ^ Visiting professorship Harald von Boehmer at the Institute for Immunology in Munich ( Memento from October 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ).
  3. ↑ Press release of the Helmholtz Association  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.helmholtz.de  
  4. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Harald von Boehmer (with picture) at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on June 30, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Boehmer, Harald von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German immunologist and pathologist as well as lymphocyte researcher
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Guben
DATE OF DEATH June 24, 2018