Pioneers and milestones

Abstract

The author had the good fortune of being a Fellow in the Allergy and Immunology Program at the University of Colorado while the Ishizakas were in Denver. Kimi and Terry would come to the division meetings and present periodic updates on the work in progress. It was clear very early on that they were onto something of major importance. It was a privilege to watch the discovery of a new immunoglobulin as a work in progress. Kimishige Ishizaka was born in Tokyo, Japan, on December 3, 1925. He received his MD from the University of Tokyo in 1948 and his DrMedSci in Immunology from the same university in 1954. In his presidential address to the American Association of Immunologists in 1985, he credited his interest in immunology to his mentor as a medical student, Professor Keizo Nakamura, who was studying mediators of anaphylaxis at the time. Teruko Ishizaka was born on September 28, 1926. She received her MD from Tokyo Women’s Medical College in 1949 and her PhD from the University of Tokyo in 1955. Kimi and Terry Ishizaka (Fig 1) were married in 1949. They spent the next 8 years in Professor Nakamura’s laboratory studying mechanisms of anaphylaxis. These studies might have influenced their later decision to attempt to identify the skin-sensitizing antibodies (reagins). Concurrently, Kimi Ishizaka also held the titles of Professor of Experimental Research and Chief of the Division of Immunoserology at the National Institutes of Health in Tokyo. In 1957, Kimi and Terry became postdoctoral fellows in Dan Campbell’s laboratory at Caltech. Their research dealt with the biologic activities of soluble immune complexes. An important product of this research was recognition that the ratio of antigen to antibody in the complexes determined some of their biologic activities. For example, complexes that contained 2 or more molecules of antibody would activate complement and elicit inflammatory reactions in skin, whereas complexes that contained 2 molecules of antigen and only 1 molecule of antibody would not. This model of bridging of antibody molecules by