CLINICAL IMMUNOLOGY SOCIETY - Key Persons

"My inspiration to go into Immunology dates from the first heart transplant in S.Africa. I attended the Massachusetts General Hospital as a final year medical student to see for myself and then watched renal transplants in theatre in London. I was not convinced that this was an ethical, life saving procedure - how wrong I was..." My inspiration to go into Immunology dates from the first heart transplant in South Africa. I attended the Massachusetts General Hospital as a final year medical student to see for myself and then watched renal transplants in theatre in London. I was not convinced that this was an ethical, life-saving procedure - how wrong I was! Once medically qualified, I was lucky to work with really top-class bosses. I completed my doctorate in a Medical Research Unit (on SRBC rosettes as a marker of human T cells) with Richard Batchelor, concentrating on the immune defect in burned patients. I then worked in Philip Gell's department in Birmingham and learned about immunology beyond T cells, transplantation and HLA. Life as a scientist (albeit a medically qualified one) was easy in Birmingham. I concentrated on the new human lymphocyte markers (few monoclonal antibodies as yet) in leukaemias and without clinical commitment, I had not intended to return to patient care; that is until I arrived in Oxford as a consultant. Once there, I found that not only was there was no one interested in immune disorders, but I was only the fourth woman consultant in a staff of >350! I found a few male general physicians willing to help me to see patients with SLE, ITP and other immune conditions in the clinics and I set up hard-copy databases for these conditions (this was 1978, before HIV). Once the new Immunology laboratory was set up to diagnose primary immune deficiencies (PIDs), it was important to be able to treat the patients. So immunology assessment and treatment clinics were established, for adults in 1983 and children in 1986; these are now run by Smita Patel. I was very fortunate to be trained by Ron Thompson in Birmingham, and to share a lab with Mansel Haeney. Once in Oxford, Mansel and I realised there was a need for a clinically based immunology textbook for both medical undergraduates and out-of-date doctors, so in 1984 we wrote Essentials of Clinical Immunology, now in the 6th edition. The clinics grew exponentially, and we had to set up immunoglobulin therapy at home by self-infusion. Long-standing friendships with many colleagues worldwide began when I was invited by Ralph Wedgwood to the WHO-PID meetings in the US. Being introduced to ESID by Roland Levinsky and David Webster to run the 1990 EGID meeting in Oxford began my involvement with EGID and subsequently ESID.

Helene Decaluwe

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Staff Member

Hey J. Chong

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University of Pittsburgh Children 's Hospital

Ismail Reisli

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Member of the Membership Committee
Necmettin Erbakan University

Ivan K. Chinn

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FCIS - Baylor College of Medicine

Ivona Aksentijevich

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Human Genome Research Institute

Jack J. Bleesing

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FCIS - Cincinnati Children 's Hospital

Jacqueline D. Squire

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Mayo Clinic Jacksonville

Jenna R. Bergerson

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Member of the Membership Committee
NIH, NIAID / LCIM

Jennifer Heimall

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Member of the Education Committee
FCIS - the Children 's Hospital of Philadelphia

Jennifer Puck

I did not know what I wanted to pursue after college, since I liked so many different subjects. I enjoyed science courses, but there were very few women in them at Harvard and I did not feel at home. I had spent 3 years as a music major, but actually much of my time, especially junior year, involved going from Cambridge to Washington DC to protest against the Viet Nam War (first picture is on the lawn of the Washington Mall, where - as we only much later learned - Richard Nixon, fuming with rage, peered out at protesters from behind tightly drawn blinds at the White House. People and their stories interested me most. I applied to grad school in anthropology, but also to medical school, thinking that it would be best to have a skill to offer in exchange for learning about different cultures. I have always wanted to work at something that could be fun, rewarding, and different every day. I was not aiming to go into medical research, but had the good luck to be part of the first MD class of 25 students in the Harvard-MIT program in Health Sciences and Technology. Professors from both places tried out new course material and shared their excitement about learning new things. In my clinical rotations, I most admired Infectious Diseases consultants; they were always the ones who knew so much that I couldn't guess their specialty. Perhaps my most inspiring teacher was the brilliant pediatric infectious diseases physician and polymath Ralph Feigin, whom I learned from as a Pediatric Resident at Washington University and followed when he went to become Chief of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Though I started out to follow Feigin's path in Pediatric Infectious Disease, I was drawn to host defenses and immunology. I had spent summers as a medical student on the Navajo Reservation, where the striking susceptibility to otitis of Navajo children led me to consider ways to study genetic susceptibility to infections. However, the new advances in gene mapping and discovery in the 1980's and 90's could be applied most easily to severe single gene immune deficiencies, so I started with SCID mapping and have been captivated by genetics of primary immune defects ever since. It is wonderful to have a career that bridges clinical medicine and discovery, and I am most grateful to all the patients and families who have taught me by sharing their stories and becoming my partners in research. The community of primary immunodeficiency physicians and researchers have also become my valued collaborators and friends, engaging together to work for SCID newborn screening, better transplant outcomes, gene therapy, and new insights into how the immune system works and what happens when it breaks. I am most proud to be a member of this group.

John L. Fahey

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Secretary - Treasurer

Jordan Abbott

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Children 's Hospital Colorado

Joud Hajjar

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FCIS - Baylor College of Medicine

Joyce E. Yu

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Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Juanita Valdes Camacho

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Louisiana State University Shreveport

Karin Chen

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Member of the Education Committee
University of Washington & Seattle Children 's Hospital

Kate Sullivan

"A few gender-specific thoughts are in order given the mission of this group. I have many traditional female traits. I'm a builder of consensus, I lead by example, I try to build trust and forge community. But- niceness must not be mistaken for weakness. It is possible to be simultaneously fierce, supportive, and pleasant. Maybe that is not your personality. Great! I don't want you to be like me. I want you to be better and to succeed by being you..." I grew up in a trailer park where job expectations were focused on 7-11. My best friend wanted to be a key punch operator (you'll have to look this up). There were two incredible boys always ranked ahead of me in school and I went to college on an athletic scholarship (fencing). In other words, I was a good student but not necessarily predestined for excellence. It was useful to have an internal driving force, not outside validation. It's hard to guess what led to me being cited as a pioneer by this group. I didn't have a perfect life plan. I went to medical school to be more competitive for grants, not because I thought I would ever see patients. I started in Neurology but the field of molecular biology was just starting and that seemed hugely cool but I had to switch to immunology to do it. I was very sure I would do Internal Medicine but clearly chose Pediatrics. Career zigs and zags can be useful I think, a focusing of one's goals.

Katherine L. Tuttle

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Member of the Membership Committee
University of Rochester

Kelli W. Williams

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Member of the Foundation Committee

Lauren A. Sanchez

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University of California San Francisco

Lauren M. Gunderman

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Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children 's Hospital of Chicago

Laurie H. Glimcher

"I was the middle of three closely-spaced daughters born to parents who had decided that girls could do anything boys could do... My parents' conviction that there were no limits to what energetic, bright girls could achieve was a persistent theme in our household and was woven into who I was early on..." I was the middle of three closely-spaced daughters born to parents who had decided that girls could do anything boys could do. Both my parents expected and assumed that my two sisters and I would lead independent lives and would have our own careers. My parents' conviction that there were no limits to what energetic, bright girls could achieve was a persistent theme in our household and was woven into who I was early on. I went to Radcliffe, where I was in the second class of women who were truly a part of Harvard College. I was a true-blue "hippie" and went around clothed in long dresses, demonstrated against the Vietnam War, skipped many classes, indulged my passion for acting, and blew up my "unknown" compound during organic chemistry lab. However, by the end of my time there, I had caught the "research bug" and was struggling on whether I wanted to be a doctor or a scientist (or neither, as I had vague longings to be an actress as well.) In medical school, I became fascinated by how the immune system fights off pathogens while at the same time being able to distinguish foreign proteins from self. After my internal medicine training, I spent three fantastic years at the Laboratory of Immunology in NIAID headed by Bill Paul, a wonderful scientist and mentor. He urged me to take on a risky project to generate class II MHC mutant antigen-presenting cell lines, which was greeted by great skepticism by many colleagues. Remarkably, we were successful and this taught me an important lesson: breakthroughs are only made by those who are willing to dare and to innovate. Bill also taught me a lot about running a lab and being an effective mentor, advice which I continue to emulate today. I returned to Harvard to obtain subspecialty training in Rheumatology and to start research in my own lab. It was a difficult time as I had no mentors at that time and there was no senior faculty member who was looking after my intellectual, emotional, or financial welfare. I had two small children and my husband was doing his surgical training at that time, so I was often a single parent. I was incredibly lucky to have the support of my parents close by, who stepped in to lend a hand frequently. If you possibly can, I recommend living near your parents or family members who will love your children. In many ways, it is the simplest and best solution to the problem of melding family and work. One worthwhile piece of advice to young women scientists: if you want children, have them. Do not sacrifice family for career- men don't have to and neither do you. I recall the statement by my younger son at age 12, after accompanying me to the ASCI meeting where I received the Distinguished Investigator Award: "I'm confused- are you a famous scientist who wins prizes, or are you the mom who snuggles us and sings to the dog?" It's not easy, but there is nothing that can compare to that. I have always felt like an intruder. An outsider who wasn't really a bona fide scientist but just happened/strayed into the field, took some risks and got lucky. I've discovered that many if not most scientists feel this way at least some of the time, and this is particularly common amongst female scientists. What I did have was a lot of energy, a passion for immunology and a willingness to wing it on the basis of incomplete knowledge. I was a master at multitasking and working in the midst of chaos, (a talent I've found usually correlates with the presence of two X chromosomes). Most of my grants and papers were written in the family room of our home, at first on a yellow pad and later on my laptop, surrounded by the kids, their friends, the dogs and whoever else happened to be around. I woke up every morning to my family and came back every night to them; always with a knowledge of reality, balance and the belief that in the long run, if I didn't make a certain discovery, someone else would- I was far from irreplaceable. The reason to be a scientist was because I loved it- it chose me rather than vice versa. I believed as Siddhartha said, "Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it." I'm still as excited about the science as I was 30 years ago, and hope that I have some good years left. Most of all, I look forward to savoring the success of the next generation of female physician scientists. May they have as much fun as I have.

Lisa R. Forbes Satter

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Baylor College of Medicine

Luigi D. Notarangelo

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FCIS - NIAID - NIH

Luis E. Murguia-Favela

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Member of the Membership Committee
FRCPC, FCIS - University of Calgary

M. Teresa De La Morena

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FCIS - Seattle Children 's Hospital / University of Washington

Madeleine Hanan

mh..@clinimmsoc.org

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Executive Director

Magda Carneiro-Sampaio

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Member of the Membership Committee
FCIS - Universidade De São Paulo

Having studied Medicine in Recife, a tropical and poor city in Northeast of Brazil, host-parasitic relationships soon gained my interest, particularly when concerned to immature hosts. Moving to the University of São Paulo Medical School (FMUSP) for residency in Pediatrics, followed by a fellowship in Allergy & Immunology in Internal Medicine Department, I developed my PhD studies in Immunology, concluded in 1978. By then, I had the privilege of identifying the first cases of humoral PIDs in Brazil, at the recently established Allergy & Immunology Unit at FMUSP Children's Hospital. The first pediatric AIDS cases were also recognized in the same Service in the 1980's.