Selected highlights in immunological research in the last decade

Abstract

This is an impressionistic and, therefore, undoubtedly subjective view of one immunologist on what seem to him the most interesting developments in the broad realm of immunology in the last ten years. Even to mention exclusively the titles of all those studies which deserve comment here would take up more than all the space allotted. I must thus start by pleading with all those friends and colleagues whose interesting work is not mentioned here to bear with me.The progress of immunology on the molecular level has been enormous, and it is not an exaggeration to state that the basic structure of antibody has been essentially formulated and solved within this decade. This success was symbolized in the joint award of the Nobel prize in Medicine and Physiology for 1972 to Rodney Porter [l] and Gerald Edelman [2] . On the antigen side, we have reached a much better understanding of the molecular basis of antigenicity (and of other immunological phenomena) largely due to the use of precisely designed immunogens. The synthetic approach has also been instrumental in the recent developments concerned with the genetic control of immune response.Lately we have begun to understand immunology at a cellular level. Certain crucial questions are still a matter of deep controversy, and the molecular approach to cellular immunological phenomena has not been yet used too extensively.