Astrid Fagraeus | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | May 30, 1913 |
| Died | February 24, 1997 |
| Nationality | Swedish |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Immunologist |
| Notable works | Antibody Production in relation to the Development of Plasma Cells |
Astrid Elsa Fagraeus-Wallbom, born May 30, 1913, in Stockholm, Sweden and died February 24, 1997, [1] was a Swedish immunologist.
Fagraeus received a PhD in medicine in 1948 from the Karolinska Institute. In 1949, she was appointed associate professor of bacteriology at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. She became head of the virology department at the Swedish Bacteriological Laboratory in 1953. In 1961–1979 she served as the first professor of immunology in Sweden, at Karolinska Institutet. [2] [3]
Fagraeus' doctoral dissertation, 'Antibody Production in relation to the Development of Plasma Cells', attracted international attention and was considered a milestone in modern immunology. In this work, she was the first to show that plasma cells produce antibodies (IgG). [3] [4] Until then, their function was unknown. During her career, she published around 80 scientific publications, and she was particularly focused on the development and maturation of T lymphocytes in the thymus. Among Fagraeus' later contributions was her role in the development of a Swedish polio vaccine, together with Professor Sven Gard. [2]
The work in her PhD dissertation led to the Swedish Medical Society's 'Jubilee Prize' in 1950. The American Association of Immunologists appointed Astrid Fagraeus an honorary member in 1973. A research building at Karolinska Institutet is named after Astrid Fagraeus. [3] [5] [6]
Fagraeus was the daughter of Consul General Isidor Fagraeus and Elsa Bäckström. She married in 1955 the director Sven Wallbom and had the children Kerstin (born 1955) and Ann (born 1956). She is buried at Norra cemetery in Solna. [1] [2]
The Karolinska Institute is a research-led medical university in Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden. The Karolinska Institute is consistently ranked amongst the world's best medical schools, ranking 6th worldwide for medicine in 2021. The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The assembly consists of fifty professors from various medical disciplines at the university. The current vice-chancellor of Karolinska Institute is Annika Östman Wernerson, who took office in March 2023.
The Karolinska University Hospital is a teaching hospital affiliated with Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, with two major sites in the municipalities of Solna and Huddinge. The hospital network is the second largest in Sweden, after Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
Elvin Abraham Kabat was an American biomedical scientist and one of the founding fathers of quantitative immunochemistry. Kabat was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in 1977, National Medal of Science in 1991, and American Association of Immunologists Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. He is the father of Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Örjan Thomas Ouchterlony was a Swedish bacteriologist and immunologist who is credited with the creation of the Ouchterlony double immuno diffusion test in the 1940s. He was trained at Karolinska Institute, where his received his medical doctorate. He worked at Sweden's State Bacteriology Laboratory from 1935 to 1952. Ouchterlony was a professor of bacteriology at the Medical Faculty of Gothenburg University from 1952 to 1980 and was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1968. In addition to his laboratory work, he did research in field epidemiology of infectious diseases and worked and lectured in Africa and the United States, as well as in several countries in Europe. Upon his retirement in 1980, the successor to his professorial chair was Jan Holmgren.
The Ouchterlony plate is one of the more frequently used techniques for the identification of antigens and antibodies, by measurement of diffusion gradients in gel. Among its many applications has been the search for tumor-specific antigens. The technique was introduced by Örjan Ouchterlony of Sweden, in 1948, initially for the in vitro testing of the toxin-producing capacity of diphtheria bacteria. The technique was proved well suited to the analysis of complex serological systems, including analysis that helped to elucidate the structural heterogeneity of immunoglobulins. Ouchterlony reviewed the history of the developments, which extends back to the late Nineteenth Century.
George Klein was a Hungarian–Swedish microbiologist and public intellectual. Specializing in cancer research, he was professor of tumour biology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm from 1957–1992, a chair created for him, and as professor emeritus continued to work as research group leader in the microbiology and tumor biology center. According to Nature, the department Klein founded was "international and influential". In the 1960s he and his wife, Eva Klein, "laid the foundation for modern tumour immunology".
The Sir William Dunn School of Pathology is a department within the University of Oxford. Its research programme includes the cellular and molecular biology of pathogens, the immune response, cancer and cardiovascular disease. It teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the medical sciences.
Tomas Hökfelt is a Swedish physician and former professor in histology at the Karolinska Institutet from 1979 until 2006, when he got his emeritate. He was linked to the Department of Neuroscience and is specialized in cell biology.
Marian Elliott "Bunny" Koshland was an American immunologist who discovered that the differences in amino acid composition of antibodies explain the efficiency and effectiveness with which they combat a huge range of foreign invaders.
Klas Kärre is a Swedish immunologist.
Fritiof Stig Sjöstrand was a Swedish physician and histologist born in Stockholm. He started his medical education at Karolinska Institutet in 1933, where he received his Ph.D. Karolinska Institutet in 1944. Sjöstrand worked as an assistant at the department of pharmacology, where he first had used polarization microscopy, he first heard about the new method of electron microscopy in 1938, within which he would become a pioneer. Manne Siegbahn at the Nobel Institute for Physics had planned to build an electron microscope in Sweden, and Sjöstrand got involved in the project to explore its use in medical research. The main challenge was to produce sufficiently thin samples, and Sjöstrand's method for producing ultrathin tissue samples was published in Nature in 1943. However, it seemed that research based on electron microscopy would be too time-consuming for a Ph.D. thesis, so his 1944 thesis was based on fluorescence spectroscopy. In 1947-1948, he received a scholarship to further study electron microscopy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Biology. Back in Sweden, he received funding to build up an electron microscopy research laboratory. In 1959, Sjöstrand was both offered a position as professor of histology at Karolinska Institutet, and as professor at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He chose UCLA, because conditions for research and funding were better there.
SciLifeLab is a world-leading Swedish national center for large-scale research and one of the largest molecular biology research laboratories in Europe at the forefront of innovation in life sciences research, computational biology, bioinformatics, training and services in molecular biosciences with focus on health and environmental research. The center combines frontline technical expertise with advanced knowledge of translational medicine and molecular bioscience.
Elias Arnér is a Swedish professor in biochemistry active in the fields of redox biology and cancer research. He studied medicine at Karolinska Institutet and became a medical doctor in 1997. He received his Ph.D. in 1993 from Karolinska Institutet on the subject of nucleoside analogues in relation to cancer and HIV treatment. He moved to Munich, Germany where he started focusing on selenoproteins. He returned to Karolinska Institutet where he became associate professor in 2000 and appointed professor in 2009. He is head of the biochemistry division in the department of medical biochemistry and biophysics at Karolinska Institutet. In 2017 he chairs the Se2017 – 200 Years of Selenium Research Conference.
Anna Magdalena Stecksén was a Swedish scientist, physician and pathologist. She was the first female Doctor of Medicine in Sweden.
Johan Frostegård, born 1959, is a Swedish professor of medicine, an inventor and a fiction and non-fiction writer.
Soniya Nityanand is an Indian immunologist specialising in hematology. She did her graduation and post graduation both from King George's Medical College, Lucknow. She later went on to pursue her PhD in Immunology from Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden in 1996.
Lars Klareskog is a Swedish physician, immunologist, and rheumatologist, known for research into the genetics of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Margaret A. Liu is a physician and researcher studying gene expression, immune responses, and vaccines. From 2015-2017, Liu served as president of the International Society of Vaccines. She is currently a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a foreign adjunct professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Since June 7, 2017, she has been a director of Ipsen S.A. in France.
Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, born 1967, is a Swedish immunologist who is Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis at the Karolinska Institute. In 2013, she demonstrated that a simple antiviral could improve the life expectancy of glioblastoma disease. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden, Söderberg-Nauclér on several occasions strongly criticized the Swedish response to SARS-CoV-2, claiming that they were leading the country into a catastrophe, and demanded that the Swedish state epidemiologist should resign.
Danuta Elizabeth Wasserman is a professor of psychiatry and suicidology at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. She is a public mental health and medical educator.
Rikard Holmdahl is a Swedish physician and immunologist. He was appointed as a full professor and the head of Medical Inflammation Research (MIR) unit at Lund University in 1993. In 2008, Rikard and his whole research group were recruited to Karolinska Institute. His team was the first to discover and positionally clone a single nucleotide polymorphism at the Ncf1 gene causing susceptibility to autoimmune diseases in rat models. Rikard was an adjunct member of the Nobel Committee for physiology or medicine between 2016 and 2021, and was ranked 2nd among the top immunology scientists in Sweden in 2021.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
