The Novartis Foundation Series is a popular collection of the proceedings from Novartis Foundation Symposia, in which groups of leading scientists from a range of topics across biology, chemistry and medicine assembled to present papers and discuss results. The Novartis Foundation, originally known as the Ciba Foundation, is well known to scientists and clinicians around the world.
This unique volume contains reviews by some of the most prominent immunologists in the world. The authors present vital facts for each of their areas of expertise and provide individual perspectives on how their own contributions were developed and how these contributions influenced general immunological thinking and development. This impressive collection of personal reviews by these internationally renowned immunologists makes The Immunologic Revolution an important and lasting contribution to the entire biomedical community.
This comprehensive treatise on the reticuloendothelial system is a project jointly shared by individual members of the Reticuloendothelial (RE) Society and bio medical scientists in general who are interested in the intricate system of cells and molecular moieties derived from those cells which constitute the RES. It may now be more fashionable in some quarters to consider these cells as part of what is called the mononuclear phagocytic system or the lymphoreticular system. Nevertheless, because of historical developments and current interest in the subject by investigators from many diverse areas, it seems advantageous to present in one comprehensive treatise current information and knowledge con cerning basic aspects of the RES, such as morphology, biochemistry, phylogeny and ontogeny, physiology, and pharmacology as weIl as clinical areas including immunopathology, cancer, infectious diseases, allergy, and hypersensitivity. It is anticipated that by presenting information concerning these apparently heterogeneous topics under the unifying umbrella of the RES attention will be focused on the similarities as weIl as interactions among the cell types constitut ing the RES from the viewpoint of various disciplines. The treatise editors and their editorial board, consisting predominantly of the editors of individual vol umes, are extremely grateful for the enthusiastic cooperation and enormous task undertaken by members of the biomedical community in general and especially by members of the American as weIl as European and Japanese Reticuloendothe lial Societies.
It is perhaps not too much of an exaggeration to claim that experimental hematology as it flourishes today originated largely from the pioneering attempts to protect lethally radiated animals (1) by shielding of hemopoietic tissues by L.O. Jacobson (9), and (2) by treatment with bone marrow suspensions by E. Lorenz and his col laborators (12). The site chosen for this annual meeting of the International Society for Experi mental Hematology is given a special historic sig nificance by the fact that it was 25 years ago that the first publication on this subject by Lorenz ap peared from his laboratory at the National Insti tutes of Health. Lorenz's discovery marked the beginning of a period which lasted until 1956, during which the protection afforded by hemopoietic cell suspensions was confirmed by many. This soon led to an intensive scientific de bate on the mechanism of this protective effect: was it due to a humoral factor produced and pro vided by the bone marrow-as Lorenz The Appearance of postulated-or to transplantation and subsequent proliferation of hemop- etic cells? This question was defini- 1 the Multipotential tively answered in 1956 by evidence from three different laboratories (7, 15, 26), which demonstrated the origin of the cells Hemopoietic in the repopulated tissues using a variety of cellu lar and immunologic markers. By the same token, these contributions marked the birth of radiation Stem Cell chimeras.
