Moh Daha, a successful scientist with a strong personality, who loves to stimulate and support his colleagues.

Mohammed R. Daha is a successful and very productive scientist. He is internationally recognised for his expertise of Complement. In addition, he contributed to many other fields of Immunology, in particular Clinical Immunology within Internal Medicine. He did not only contribute to Nephrology and Transplantation, but also to Rheumatology, Infectious diseases and Pulmonology. He enjoyed teaching and he was also appreciated for his guidance of biomedical and clinical PhD's.

Ita Askonas and her influence in the field of antigen presentation.

This volume on antigen presentation is dedicated to Brigitte Askonas. We summarize here her many contributions to immunology and the impact that her career had on many of us. Critical experimental work on antigen presentation was done in her laboratory under her direction, first examining responses to protein antigens, later examining viruses as she turned her attention to the immunology of infections.

¿Haciendo un poco de historia... ? / Making a little bit of history... ?

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Measuring potency of allergenic extracts

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Three decades of human monoclonal antibodies: past, present and future developments.

The hybridoma technique has been shown to be a most reproducible method for producing rodent monoclonal antibodies but poor results were obtained when it was used for generating human monoclonal antibodies. For immunotherapy, murine monoclonal antibodies are inadequate, whereas human monoclonal antibodies are virtually indispensable. Cellular, chemical, genetic and molecular methods to generate human monoclonal antibodies have been developed. Most often, the monoclonal antibodies for therapy are selected after deliberate vaccination, according to their high affinity towards an arbitrarily-chosen epitope of a pathogen or cellular antigen and therefore the selection is obviously skewed. A major hindrance of the production of therapeutic human monoclonal antibodies is the lack of an appropriate strategy to define and select the antibodies that would be effective in vivo. In contrast to antibodies induced by vaccination, there has been only a marginal interest in monoclonal antibodies which reflect antibodies of the innate immunity. In the future, human monoclonal antibodies that resemble antibodies that are ubiquitously present in sera of healthy individuals might serve as novel therapies in diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, where no other therapy exists.

"Experiments of Nature" and the New Era of Immunology: an historical perspective.

This review of the events leading to the New Era of Immunology focuses on the important leads provided by the Experiments of Nature. Not only did they provide the path that led to our present knowledge of the ontogeny of the immune system, but also to an entirely new perspective of lymphocytic malignancies. The power of taking clinical clues to the laboratory to conduct experiments not otherwise envisioned and then returning with that information to impact the clinical problem that motivated the studies is elaborated. Finally, the ongoing utility of this approach is emphasized.

Labeled antigens and antibodies: the evolution of magic markers and magic bullets.

The ability to label antigens and antibodies with simple chemicals and even with whole proteins fostered new approaches to basic studies of the immune system as well as new methods of immunodiagnosis and immunotherapy. This was especially true following the introduction of monoclonal antibodies, which enhanced the specificity of many of these applications. The uses to which these labeled immunoreagents were put were legion, and those who employed them might come from any field of biology or medicine. Many of these technical elaborations were critical to progress in immunology and in many other biomedical sciences. They illustrate also the often complex interplay between technology and theory.

[Clinical immunology in rheumatology]. / Klinicheskaia immunologiia v revmatologii.

When the Institute of Rheumatology, USSR Ministry of Health, was founded, its first director Academician A. I. Nesterov set up an immunological laboratory to attack the problems of immunodiagnosis and pathogenesis of rheumatism. Since 1958 studies of systemic diseases of connective tissue and autoimmunity under the supervision of Prof. V. A. Nasonova have been under way. Radioisotopic, enzyme immunofluorescence diagnostic assays for antinuclear antibodies (ANA) have been developed. Jointly with Czechoslovakia and the USA, the Institute of Rheumatology standardized the definitions of ANA. The laboratory have proposed the guidelines of the USSR Ministry of Health for immunodiagnosis of rheumatic diseases (RD). For immunodiagnosis, immunofluorescence, enzyme immunoassays, gel precipitation, back electrophoresis, radial immunodiffusion are widely used to measure the concentrations of anticardiolipin antibodies, mitochondrial antibodies, neutrophilic antibodies. The clinical and immunological subtypes of diffuse connective tissue diseases have been identified and characterized. Mixed connective tissue disease, poststreptococcal arthritis are described. The laboratory equipment for polymerase chain reaction permits DNA diagnosis.