Word: zinkernagel
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...immune system evolve to reject something--an organ transplant--that didn't become common until the 20th century? In the 1970s a couple of outsiders, working in relative isolation in Australia, hit on the answer. Australian Peter Doherty, who trained as a veterinary surgeon, and Dr. Rolf Zinkernagel, a Swiss specialist in tropical diseases, figured out that the rejection response was actually a by-product of the body's basic virus-defense system...
Doherty and Zinkernagel showed that the white blood cells of the immune system look for changes in a key marker called the self protein, which identifies cells as belonging to one's own body. Any alterations in this protein--such as those that occur when a cell is invaded by a virus--tag the cell for destruction. Doherty and Zinkernagel's research, which won this year's Physiology or Medicine Nobel, could lead to new kinds of vaccines against cancer, multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune disorders...
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