In rememberance of a valued member of our editorial board, Dr. Yoonkyung Do

Abstract

One of our editorial board members, Dr. Yoonkyung Do, a promising immunologist who continued her research and teaching at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in Korea, passed away this March 28. She was 43. Dr. Do was first diagnosed with ovarian cancer during her studies in the United States. In spite of her attempt to cure the illness, it sadly recurred five years ago. Nevertheless, she was so dedicated to her research and academics that even those around her had no clue that she had been going through chemotherapy. Until the very end of her battle against cancer, she remained active in directing students’ work and discussing the future directions of her current research. Dr. Do obtained her Bachelor of Science at Pohang University of Science and Technology in Korea in 1995, Master of Science at Seoul National University in 1997, and Ph.D. in immunology at the Medical College of Virginia Commonwealth University in the States. She then worked with Professor Ralph M. Steinman, who was the first to discover dendritic cells (DCs), which led to her career as a professor at UNIST since 2009. Despite her weakened health, she did not stop giving her best, winning the Gold Prize in the Bio Engineering & Life Science field of the 2015 Samsung Human-Tech Thesis Competition and publishing her last paper (DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2015.05.042) in a recent issue of Cell Reports. Her final work uncovered a mechanistic role of CD8α(-) DCs in the initiation of T follicular helper cell differentiation and thereby provided a rationale for investigating CD8α(-) DCs in enhancing antigen-specific humoral immune responses for improving vaccines and therapeutics. What Dr. Do said with a bright smile during her last years of life still touches my heart. People keep telling me I should recuperate, but work is more comforting than anything to me. Doing research and interacting with my colleagues is my own way of recuperating. Dr. Do once wrote and published a memorial letter in this very JPIS editorial column (DOI: 10.5051/jpis.2011.41.5.209) to her mentor, Professor Steinman, when he passed away shortly after his nomination for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2011. Now, I would like to pay tribute to her memory in the same way. Dr. Do's tremendous passion towards sincere scientific research and her contribution to JPIS will always be remembered.