— In 1973, a young scientist by the name of Ralph Steinman became the first person to identify and describe an unusual immune cell called the dendritic cell. At a time when immunology was dominated by research on cell types known as B cells and T cells, most scientists initially considered these comparatively rare, strikingly branched cells discovered by Steinman to be nothing more than a curious oddity. Steinman and his colleagues fought an uphill battle advocating the importance of these cells in controlling the immune response, and it took almost a decade for their ideas to gain significant traction in the scientific community. Despite this initial struggle, Steinman’s ideas eventually revolutionized immunology and the greater medical field to such a degree that this year he was awarded the Noble Prize in Medicine – albeit, tragically, three days after he passed away from pancreatic cancer. Continue reading Dendritic cells – catalysts of the immune response