Title:

Letter from Otto Bier, Instituto Biologico (Brazil) to Michael Heidelberger

Creator:

Bier, Otto
Instituto Biologico

Recipient:

Heidelberger, Michael

Date:

26 May 1942

Description:

Otto Bier recounted in this letter his return to Brazil from a year in Heidelberger's laboratory, where he had studied complement, a complex, essential component of host defense mechanisms against invading organisms. At the time, the term referred to the heat-sensitive factors in serum that trigger cytolysis, the dissolution of antibody-coated cells. Today, complement refers to a functionally related system of at least twenty different serum proteins that play a key role not just in cytolysis, but in other immune responses, including phagocytosis, the engulfing of foreign matter by immune cells, and anaphylaxis, a form of hypersensitivity reaction to a specific antigen with often life-threatening consequences. Heidelberger was one of the founders of the study of complement by showing that it was a group of chemical substances related to one another through enzymatic reactions.

Location:

Box: 1. Folder: 21

Rights:

Reproduced with permission of the Instituto Biologico, Avenida Conselheiro Rodrigues Alves

Genre:

Letters (correspondence)

Subject:

Complement System Proteins

Format:

Text

Extent:

2 pages

Language:

English

Legacy ID:

DHBBFH

NLM ID:

101584940X68

Profiles Collection:

The Michael Heidelberger Papers

Shareable Link:

https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/101584940X68

Story Section:

Antigens and Antibodies: Heidelberger and The Rise of Quantitative Immunochemistry, 1928-1954