QnAs with Max D. Cooper and Jacques F. A. P. Miller

Anyone who has ever contracted chicken pox can thank the adaptive immune system for future protection against the disease. It is also thanks to this system that vaccines prevent diseases. The adaptive immune system provides organisms with a memory of past infections, enabling the body to quickly kill returning infections before they can do significant damage. Immunologists Jacques F. A. P. Miller and Max D. Cooper determined that adaptive immunity requires 2 distinct cell types that perform complementary functions. Miller’s findings, published in the early 1960s in Lancet (1) and Proceedings of the Royal Society (2), showed that the ability to distinguish one’s own cells from foreign cells, a key feature of the adaptive immune system, depends on lymphocytes, now known as T cells, matured in an organ called the thymus. Subsequently, Cooper reported in Nature (3) that antibody production depends on a separate set of lymphocytes, dubbed B cells. The division of labor between T and B cells is a fundamental organizing principle of the adaptive immune system, the discovery of which laid the groundwork for modern immunology and made possible many subsequent medical advances, including monoclonal antibody production, vaccine development, and checkpoint inhibition therapies for cancer. In recognition of their discoveries, Miller and Cooper, both members of the National Academy of Sciences, received the 2019 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. PNAS spoke with both researchers to commemorate the occasion.

PNAS:How did each of you get involved in studying the immune system?

Miller:I was interested in doing medical research from an early age, because my sister died of tuberculosis a few years before streptomycin, and I got …