A new Frontiers in Immunology Research Topic brings together the stories of those at the forefront of modern-day immunology

“In the highly competitive world of biomedical science, often the rush to publish and to be recognized as ‘first’ with a new discovery, concept or method is lost in the hurly burly of the moment, as ‘the maddening crowd’ moves on to the next ‘new thing’. One of the great things about immunology today is that it has only matured as a science within the last half-century, and especially within the past 35 years as a consequence of the revolution of molecular immunology, which has taken place only since 1980. Consequently, most of those who have contributed to our new understanding of how the immune system functions are still alive and well, and still contributing.

“‘A Living History of Immunology’ intends to collate as many stories as possible from the investigators who actually performed the experiments that have established the frontiers of immunology. Accordingly, we are after the ‘truth’, to combat ‘revisionist science’, by those who want to alter history by telling the stories a different way than actually happened. In this regard, one of the good things about science versus other disciplines is that we have the written record of what was done, when it was done and by whom. Even so we do not have the complete story or narrative of how and why experiments were done, and what made the differences that led to success. This Research Topic is meant to chronicle these stories in the past fifty years in immunology.”

– Kendall A Smith, Frontiers in Immunology Field Chief Editor

Published articles:

Kendall A Smith: Revisiting the first long-term culture of tumour-specific cytotoxic lymphocytesJacques F A P Miller: Revisiting Thymus FunctionNicholas A Mitchison: The discovery of T cell-B cell cooperationEdward A Clark: A short history of the B cell-associated surface molecule CD40Harald Von Boehmer: Deciphering thymic developmentToshio Hirano: Revisiting the 1986 molecular cloning of interleukin 6Donald Mosier: The Story Behind “A Requirement for Two Cell Types for Antibody Formation In Vitro”.R Chris Bleackley: Cloning CTL-Specific Genes (and now for something completely differential)Joost J. Oppenheim: Evolution of the Serendipitous Discovery of Macrophage-Lymphocyte InteractionsRichard W Dutton: In Vitro studies of the antibody response: antibodies of different specificity are made in different populations of cells.

Martin Raff: Defining cell-surface antigenic markers for mouse T and B cells

Henry N Claman: On discovering thymus-marrow synergism

Ellis L Reinherz: Revisiting the discovery of the αβ TCR complex and its co-receptors

Paweł Kisielow: Demonstration of functional heterogeneity of T lymphocytes and identification of their two major subsets

Igal Gery: The definition of lymphocyte activating factor: giving a Helping Hand to Serendipity

Eva Severinson: Identification of the IgG1-induction factor (Interleukin 4)

Submitted articles: Tak W Mak: The T-cell receptor: cracking the code of immunity

Kiyoshi Takatsu: _Revisiting the identification and cDNA cloning of T cell-replacing factor/interleukin-5_

Image credit: Mayo Clinic