Ivan Lefkovits

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Ivan Lefkovits (2018)

Ivan Lefkovits (born January 21, 1937 in Prešov ) is a Czechoslovak-Swiss immunologist .

Life

Ivan Lefkovits was deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp with his older brother Paul and his mother in 1944 . Paul was killed in Ravensbrück during the "Mitwerda" campaign, while Ivan and his mother were transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp . There they were liberated by the British Army in 1945. The rest of the Lefkovits family perished during the Shoah . Ivan Lefkovits studied chemistry at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague from 1956 to 1961. After studying at the Institute for Microbiology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and a two-year research stay ( 1965 to 1967) at the Laboratorio Internazionale di Genetica e Biofisica (LIGB) in Naples, he received a doctorate in molecular biology in 1967. In 1967 he emigrated to Germany, where he headed the basic research group for immunology at the Paul Ehrlich Institute under Niels Kaj Jerne. In 1969 he was entrusted with setting up the Basel Institute for Immunology (BII) and carried out research there until its closure in 2001. After that, until 2012 he was responsible for the proteomics working group at the Department of Biomedicine at the University Hospital Basel .

Lefkovits was assistant professor (1979) and professor (1989 to 2001) at the Philipps University of Marburg and visiting professor at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford (1977), at the Hôpital Necker in Paris (1999), at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (2002) and at the Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake, New York (USA, 2004).

From 1991 to 1994 he led courses in immunology at the Charles University in Prague and at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and at the Central European Summer School of Immunology in Pieštany, České Budějovice, Košice and Prague.

Act

The focus of Lefkovits' scientific work was immunology. At LIGB he investigated the ribosomal proteins and the chloramphenicol particles as well as the conditions for the reconstruction of functional ribosomes. He then established the microculture system based on the in vitro methodology (Mishell-Dutton system). At the Basel Institute for Immunology, he first transferred the microculture system to the new method of limiting dilution analysis (LDA). He then researched the function of B lymphocytes , their clonal proliferation and the frequency of precursor cells in the induction of antibody formation.

This was followed by the development of proteomics methodology for an analysis of intracellular mechanisms of immune competence. Over the past ten years at the Basel Institute for Immunology, Lefkovits has been investigating the development of the cDNA library for lymphocytes, the ordered libraries and their cell-free protein-synthetic profile. In cooperation with the cardio surgery department at the University Hospital Basel, he carried out the proteomics study on heart muscle proteins.

As a survivor of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Lefkovits is committed to promoting the culture of remembrance of the Holocaust. From 1995 to 2011 he was a member of the board of the association “Contact point for survivors of the Holocaust in Switzerland”. He initiated the collection of memoirs, funded by the Swiss Confederation and published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 2016, I Live With My Past , in which 15 Holocaust survivors describe their lives during and after the rule of the National Socialists. There are translations into French and Czech. The title pages of the collection and the individual chapters were designed by Gerhard Richter . These are excerpts from the four pictures from his Birkenau monumental cycle , which are exhibited in the Reichstag building in Berlin.

Lefkovits is a member of the Commission Advisory Group of the intergovernmental Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), of which Switzerland has been a member since 2004. He carries out educational work through discussions with contemporary witnesses in the YMCA youth summer camps on the grounds of the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and in the Anne Frank House in Oldau as well as in various schools, high schools, universities, institutes, associations, communities and at congresses in Switzerland, in Germany and the Czech Republic.

Publications (selection)

  • Induction of antibody-forming cell clones in microcultures . In: Eur. J. Immuol. tape 2 , 1972, p. 360-365 .
  • Precommitment in the immune system . In: Current Topics in Microbiol. And Immunol. tape 65 , 1974, pp. 21-58 .
  • with J. Quintans, A. Munro, H. Waldmann: T-Cell dependent mediator and B-cell clones . In: Immunology . tape 28 , 1975, p. 1149-1154 .
  • Limiting dilution analysis of cells in the immune system . Cambridge University Press, 1979.
  • Immunological Methods Vol. I . Academic Press, 1979.
  • Immunological Methods Vol. II . Academic Press, 1981.
  • The Immune System Vol. I and Vol. II . Karger, 1981.
  • with P. Young, L. Kuhn, J. Kettman, A. Gemmell, S. Tollaksen, L. Anderson, N. Anderson: Use of large scale two-dimensional ISODALT gel electrophoresis system in immunology . In: Immunological Methods (I. Lefkovits and B. Pernis, Eds.) . Vol. 3, Academic Press, New York, 1985, pp. 163-185 .
  • Immunological Methods Vol. III . Academic Press, 1985.
  • Self and non-self discrimination by "restriction proteases" . In: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA . tape 83 , 1986, pp. 3437-3438 .
  • with L. Kuhn, O. Valiron, A. Merle, J. Kettman: Toward an objective classification of cells in the immune system . In: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA . tape 85 , 1988, pp. 3565-3569 .
  • C. Coleclough, L. Kuhn, I. Lefkovits: Regulation of messenger RNA abundance in activated T lymphocytes: Identification of mRNA species affected by the inhibition of protein synthesis . In: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA . tape 87 , 1990, pp. 1753-1757 .
  • with J. Kettman, C. Coleclough: A strategy for founding a global lymphocyte proteinpaedia and gene catalog . In: Immunol. Today . tape 11 , 1990, pp. 157-162 .
  • Immunological Methods Vol. IV . Academic Press, 1991.
  • Immunology Methods Manual in 4 volumes . Academic Press, 1996.
  • A Portrait of the Immune System . World Scientific Publishing, 1996.
  • with H. Waldmann: Limiting dilution analysis of cells in the immune system . 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • Functional and structural proteomics: a critical appraisal . In: J. Chromat. B . tape 787 , 2003, p. 1-10 .
  • with HR Zerkowski, T. Grussenmeyer, P. Matt, M. Grapow. S. Engelhardt: Proteomics Strategies in Cardiovascular Research . In: J. Proteome Res . tape 3 , 2004, p. 200-208 .
  • Editor: I live with my past. Memoirs of Holocaust Survivors. Jewish publishing house in Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 9783633542772

Memberships and honors

Memberships

  • Member, Assembly, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (1993–2001)
  • Member, Educational Committee, International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS)
  • Chairman, Central European Summer School of Immunology (1992–1995)
  • Member, International Cell Research Organization (ICRO)
  • British Society for Immunology (UK)
  • German Society for Immunology
  • Swiss Society for Immunology
  • Swiss Proteomic Society
  • Honorary Member, Indian Immunology Society
  • Honorary member, Czechoslovak Immunological Society
  • Honorary member, Czechoslovak Microbiological Society
  • Honorary member of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic

Awards

  • Gold Reiman Medal (Reiman Society, Prešov), 1992
  • GJ Mendel Medal of Honor, Czech Academy of Sciences, 1995
  • Purkynje Medal, Medical Society, 2000
  • Garnet Immunoglobulin of the Czech Immunological Society, 2007
  • Honorary doctorate (Dr. hc) from the University of Presov, Slovakia, 2007
  • Golden 70th Anniversary Medal of the University Košice, 2008
  • Medal of Honor “De scientia et humanitate optime meritis” of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2016

literature

  • Ivan Lefkovits: History of the Basel Institute for Immunology . Karger, 2017.
  • Zlatko Dembic et al .: Festschrift in honor of Ivan Lefkovits . In: Scandinavian Journal of Immunology . 62, Supplement 1, 2005.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Limiting dilution analysis LDA
  2. ↑ https://www.suhrkamp.de/autoren/ivan_lefkovits_14388.html
  3. ↑ Gerhard Richter presents the “Birkenau” cycle of pictures to the Bundestag. Website of the German Bundestag.
  4. ↑ Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)
  5. ↑ Youth work in Bergen-Belsen
personal data
SURNAME Lefkovits, Ivan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czechoslovak-Swiss immunologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Prešov