Life-Saving Antibodies: History of Immunization

In 1796, Edward Jenner scraped pus from the blisters of a milkmaid infected with cowpox, which he inoculated into the arms of his gardener’s son to protect him from smallpox. Almost a century later, Louis Pasteur developed vaccinations against diseases such as anthrax and rabies using weakened pathogens. Shortly afterwards, Emil von Behring, Kitasato Shibasaburō, and Paul Ehrlich demonstrated that antitoxins in the serum of horses vaccinated with diphtheria toxin could cure diphtheria patients. The complementary lock and key binding of the antitoxin (antibody) with the toxin (antigen) postulated by Paul Ehrlich was confirmed 40 years later by Linus Pauling. As a direct result of the work of these early pioneers, successful vaccination campaigns have been carried out against various pathogens in the past 50 years. More recently, advances in the isolation and genetic engineering of antibodies against tumor-associated antigens have opened up new possibilities for treating cancer.