The Heidelberger-Kabat Distinguished Lecture in Immunology

In memory of two outstanding immunologists who worked at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, the families of Dr. Michael Heidelberger and Dr. Elvin A. Kabat, in conjunction with the University, have established the Heidelberger-Kabat Distinguished Lectureship in Immunology. The goal of the Lectureship is to honor Drs. Heidelberger and Kabat, longtime colleagues and friends, by sponsoring an annual lecture by a scientist representing the best current research in immunology.

Michael Heidelberger (1888 - 1991)

Trained in organic chemistry, Michael Heidelberger started out at Rockefeller Institute before World War I working with Walter Jacobs on chemotherapies for infectious diseases. In the early 1920's, he embarked on the characterization of the immunologic specificity of pneumococcal polysaccharides and continued this work after his move to Columbia in 1928. His work demonstrated that 1) polysaccharides are effective antigens (in the absence of any peptide component), thus dispelling the myth that only proteins could serve as antigens, and 2) antibodies are proteins, bringing immunochemistry out of the vague realm of colloidal chemistry. Using antibodies as specific reagents, Heidelberger carried out structural analyses of a wide variety of naturally occurring polysaccharides, e.g. in tree resins and gums, some of industrial importance. He published peer-reviewed scientific papers in every decade of the 20th century, and colleagues continued sending him materials for analysis almost until his death at 103. Heidelberger brought the precise methods of analytical chemistry to the determination of antibodies, antigens, and complement on a weight basis, providing the gold standard against which miniaturized and rapid methods such as RIA and ELISA could be standardized and compared. A very kind and unassuming man, with a totally international outlook, Michael Heidelberger is widely regarded as the founder of imunochemistry.

Elvin A. Kabat (1914 - 2000)

Elvin Kabat started out as a "helper" in Michael Heidelberger's laboratory in 1933 and four years later obtained his Ph.D. under him. In the course of his doctoral work, he developed a life-long interest in carbohydrate chemistry, which later led to his unraveling the complex chemistry of human blood group substances. In 1937-38 as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow in Uppsala, Sweden in the laboratory of Arne Tiselius, Kabat used the then new technique of electrophoresis to show that immunoglobulins comprise the "gamma globulin" fraction of human serum. He applied this insight to demonstrating that gamma globulin was present in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with multiple sclerosis and responsible for the diagnostically useful "colloidal gold curve." In 1947, Kabat began to work on an animal model of MS, so-called experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), in monkeys, introducing the use of the complete Freund adjuvant (killed tubercle bacilli in mineral oil) and establishing unequivocally the autoimmune character of this disease process. With a postdoctoral fellow, Baruj Benacerraf, he initiated the quantitative study of antibodies in anaphylaxis and allergy. In 1951, Kabat and his colleagues showed that the polysaccharide dextran, which was then used as a plasma substitute, was immunogenic in humans. This led them to carry out a series of experiments to identify fragments of dextran that would block anti-dextran antibodies. These studies provided the first estimates of the size and shape of an antibody's antigen combining site. In the early 1970s Kabat realized that the amino acid sequence information becoming available for antibodies might provide further information about antigen combining sites. With Tai Te Wu he developed variability plots that identified "hypervariable" regions, corresponding to antigen binding sites. Over the next two decades, he and his colleagues published five editions of a book compiling amino acid and DNA sequences of antibodies. Kabat received many honors for his work, including the National Medal of Science in 1991. His book with Manfred M. Mayer, Experimental Immunochemistry, which went through 2 editions, was the bible of the immunochemistry field from the time it appeared (1948) until at least the mid-70's. Elvin Kabat was a respected and beloved member of the Department of Microbiology at Columbia for many years and is remembered not only for his outstanding scientific mind but also for his high standards, his forthrightness, and his wonderful sense of humor.