Robert A. Good

Robert Alan Good (born May 21, 1922 in Crosby , Crow Wing County , Minnesota , † June 13, 2003 in St. Petersburg , Florida ) was an American physician ( immunologist ) who was a pioneer in bone marrow transplantation .

Life

Good graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in 1944 and a PhD in 1947. As a college student, he suffered a polio- like illness that partially paralyzed him and put him in a wheelchair forced and from which later a walking disability remained. Good received residency training in pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Hospital. After a year in 1949 at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City (with Maclyn McCarty , Henry Kunkel ) he returned to the University of Minnesota in 1950, where he did research in immunology (in particular hereditary immunodeficiencies, but also phylogenesis of the immune system in the animal kingdom ) and in 1962 became Professor of Pediatrics, Microbiology and Pathology . At times he headed the pathology department. In 1969 he became Regent's Professor. In 1972 he became director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute of Cancer Research in New York City. In 1982 he was in cancer research at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in Oklahoma City and from 1985 he was chief physician at All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg in Florida and head of the pediatric department at the University of South Florida Medical School.

Good did pioneering work in immunology and, together with his colleagues, found the cellular basis of many innate immune deficiencies. His research also led to the recognition of the central importance of the thymus for the development of the human immune system and the role of two main cell lines in the immune system, B cells and T cells . A rare, congenital immune deficiency, known today as Good's Syndrome, played a special role in the beginning.

He also researched the influence of diet on the immune system (and on breast cancer) and the immunosuppressive effects of retroviruses , among other things . As early as the 1940s he showed that the herpes virus can be "activated" from its latent phase by anaphylactic shock .

Good showed in animal models (mice) that certain congenital immune deficiencies can be completely cured by bone marrow transplants (with prior removal of certain lymphocytes). In 1968 he performed one of the first successful bone marrow transplants as a therapy for a non-cancer disease. He gave his sister's marrow to a five-month-old boy. The boy suffered from a hereditary immune deficiency to which eleven other (male) family members had already fallen victim. The patient was permanently cured by the transplant.

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences as well as their Institutes of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1975/1976 he served as President of the American Association of Immunologists . In 1970 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research and the Gairdner Foundation International Award and gave the George M. Kober Lecture . 1972 received the American College of Physicians Award, 1975 the William B. Coley Award from the Cancer Research Institute and 1987 the John Howland Award from the American Pediatric Society.

During his time at the Sloan Kettering Institute, a well-known scientific fraud case occurred in one of his co-workers who faked skin grafts in mice by coloring their fur (William T. Summerlin, revealed 1974).

literature

• MD Cooper: In memoriam. Robert A. Good May 21, 1922-June 13, 2003. In: Journal of Immunology. Volume 171, Number 12, December 2003, pp. 6318-6319, ISSN  0022-1767 . PMID 14662826 .

Web links

• Robert A. Good Archives
• Obituary at the National Academy of Sciences, PDF

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Also "Thymoma with Immunodeficiency", thymoma with immunodeficiency
2. ↑ Main research results by Good, in the Robert A. Good Archive ( Memento of the original from December 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.