Of mice and Nobel laureates

By Damon Shorter

Rolf Zinkernagel, who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Medicine with Peter Doherty, last week spoke warmly and irreverently about the time he spent at the ANU in the 1970s.

He was a PhD student at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in 1974 when he and Peter Doherty made their fundamental discoveries about the immune system that led to their being awarded science's most prestigious prize.

As with most scientific breakthroughs, Professor Zinkernagel said their discovery involved a "good portion of luck". However he qualified this by saying that "the harder you work the luckier you usually get."

Professor Zinkernagel told those gathered at the John Curtin School of Medical Research to see him present a replica of his prize to the Vice Chancellor, Deane Terrell, how his wife and children had spent many Saturday afternoons on the lawn in front of the School waiting for him to finish tending his experiments.

"We had a tremendous time. The blend of people at the School was just fantastic," he said. "Everyone was very involved in their work and trying to find out what it all meant and we had some fantastic fights."

He recalls a dispute over some experimental mice with one of his colleagues, Kevin Lafferty, now the Director of the School.

"It simply happened that Kevin took one of these extensive vacations, which a good Swiss like myself would of course never take, and there were probably fewer mice than he would have liked when he got back," Zinkernagel offered.

Professor Lafferty's recollection is more concise ("he knocked-off my mice while I was down at the coast"), however he insists the dispute was resolved without animosity.

After completing his PhD at the ANU in 1975, Professor Zinkernagel continued his research on infectious diseases and he now head's the Institute of Experimental Immunology in Zurich.

"Twenty or thirty years ago, everybody thought there was no real problem with infectious diseases-antibiotics had taken care of bacteria, vaccines had taken care of the most acute viral diseases," he said. "But all the problem diseases are still there and they will come back."

He predicted the next frontier in medicine will to be to understand the delicate balance between infection and the immune system that is upset during disease. The body can contain deadly diseases like AIDS for many years after infection with HIV, he explained, adding that if this period were prolonged, many diseases could be effectively controlled.