on October 4, 2011
Yesterday morning the IRB was delighted to learn that the Nobel Assembly had decided to honour Bruce Beutler (The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla), Jules Hoffmann (University of Strasbourg), and Ralph Steinman (The Rockefeller University, New York) with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This news, however, was soon greatly shadowed by the announcement that Prof. Steinman had passed away last Friday.
Prof. Ralph Steinman was honoured for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity. He also demonstrated that this new cell type has the unique capacity to activate T cells and initiate an adaptive immune response against many different antigens.
Besides being a renowned scientist all over the world, Prof. Ralph Steinman was very dear to the IRB. He was member of the IRB Scientific Advisory Board from 2000 to 2004 and collaborated with IRB scientists on several research projects granted by the European Union. He honoured us with his presence at the DC2010 Conference that was held in Lugano last year. In his closing lecture Prof. Ralph Steinman announced the creation of the new International Society for Dendritic Cell and Vaccine Science (http://www.dc-vaccine.org/).
Prof. Steinman’s passing is a huge loss to the scientific community and a great personal loss to the IRB. Our thoughts are with Ralph’s family and his colleagues at the Rockefeller University.