Timeline

15 moments that made immunology what it is. Each one is a publication, a first or a decision that can be looked up.

1. 1796Edward Jenner inoculates a boy with cowpox and shows that it protects against smallpox.
2. 1882Élie Metchnikoff observes cells engulfing foreign matter in starfish larvae — phagocytosis.
3. 1885Louis Pasteur’s rabies vaccine is given to a person for the first time.
4. 1890Emil von Behring and Kitasato Shibasaburō show that serum from immunised animals neutralises toxins — the first antibodies at work.
5. 1957Macfarlane Burnet proposes the clonal selection theory.
6. 1973Ralph Steinman identifies the dendritic cell.
7. 1974Rolf Zinkernagel and Peter Doherty show that T cells recognise infection only together with the body’s own MHC molecules.
8. 1975Georges Köhler and César Milstein make monoclonal antibodies.
9. 1976Susumu Tonegawa shows that antibody genes are rearranged to generate diversity.
10. 1980The World Health Organization declares smallpox eradicated.
11. 1983The virus that causes AIDS is identified; it destroys the helper T cells on which adaptive immunity depends.
12. 1995Shimon Sakaguchi identifies regulatory T cells.
13. 2011The first immune checkpoint inhibitor is approved for cancer treatment.
14. 2017The first CAR-T cell therapy is approved in the United States.
15. 2020The first mRNA vaccines are authorised, less than a year after their target virus was sequenced.