Jean Dausset

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Jean Dausset 2005

Jean Baptiste Gabriel Joachim Dausset (born October 19, 1916 in Toulouse , † June 6, 2009 in Palma , Spain ) was a French physician and hematologist who mainly dealt with immunology and transplant medicine . He received the Robert Koch Prize in 1977 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1980 together with Baruj Benacerraf and George Davis Snell for the discovery of genetically determined cellular surface structures that control immunological reactions.

Life

Jean Dausset was born in 1916 as the son of a doctor and attended the Michelet high school in Vanves near Paris . He then studied at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris and in 1937 went to a municipal hospital in the city, where he worked as an assistant doctor. In 1939 he was drafted into the army and served in a medical corps. He received his doctorate in 1945 on blood transfusions , after which he specialized in hematology, i.e. the examination of blood .

In 1946 he became director of the French National Blood Transfusion Center in Paris, where he stayed until 1962. During this time he worked for several years as a visiting scholar at Harvard University in Cambridge in the fields of blood diseases and immune defense. This was followed by an appointment to the chair of hematology at the University of Paris. From 1969 to 1977 he was professor of immunohematology at the Faculty of Lariboisière-Saint-Louis and from 1968 to 1984 he was also director of the research area of ​​immunogenetics at the National Medical Research Institute. From 1978 to 1988 he went to the Collège de France as a professor of experimental medicine . In 1977 he received a Gairdner Foundation International Award and was admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1979, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981 . Since 1977 he has been a member of the Académie des Sciences .

With the prize money for the Nobel Prize, which he received in 1980, Dausset founded the Center d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain (CEPH), where studies of the human genome were carried out. The research institute collected DNA from 61 large families, which they made available to researchers to decode the genome. He also founded France Transplants and France Bone Marrow Grafts , two companies that dealt with the acquisition of organ donors. In 1993 the CEPH became the Jean-Dausset-CEPH Foundation, Dausset resigned as President of the Foundation in 2003 and remained an honorary professor until his death. He died on June 6, 2009 in Palma , Mallorca , Spain , at the age of 92.

plant

Jean Dausset and his two colleagues who were honored with him dealt mainly with the immunological compatibility of tissues after transplants. Benacerraf, Snell and Dausset were able to demonstrate in their experiments that these immune factors are genetically fixed. They are largely responsible for making it possible to investigate these factors experimentally, as they were able to demonstrate that the same factors are found on the white blood cells, the leukocytes , as in other body cells. As a result, an immune factor system could be developed which functions similarly to the blood group systems and in which defense reactions can already be carried out through tests with patient's blood.

Dausset and Benacerraf worked in parallel on the elucidation of key biochemical molecules in this histocompatibility complex , while Snell, as geneticists, primarily identified the genes that were responsible for the acceptance and rejection of exogenous tissues.

literature

  • Dominique J. Charron: Jean Dausset (1916-2009). "Father" of the human leukocyte antigen system. In: Nature . Volume 460, No. 7253, 2009, p. 338, doi: 10.1038 / 460338a
  • Gisela Baumgart: Dausset, Jean Baptiste. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 288 f.

Web links

Commons : Jean Dausset  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gisela Baumgart: Dausset, Jean Baptiste. 2005, p. 288.
  2. ↑ Thomas H. Maugh II: Dr. Jean Dausset dies at 92; scientist's discovery made tissue typing for transplants possible . The New Nork Times, June 27, 2009.
personal data
SURNAME Dausset, Jean
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dausset, Jean Baptiste Gabriel Joachim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French medic and hematologist, Nobel Prize winner in medicine
DATE OF BIRTH October 19, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Toulouse
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 2009
Place of death Palma , Spain