Mechanism of HIV Entry Elucidated; Chemokine Receptors Implicated in Pathogenesis of AIDS

Foundation announced the winners of the 1996 Nobel Prizes for physics, chemistry and physiology or medicine. Peter C. Doherty of the St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital and Rolf M. Zinkernagel of the Institute of Experimental Immunology, Zurich, shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of how the immune system recognizes virus-infected cells. Doherty and Zinkernagel found that a T lymphocyte from one strain of mice could not kill an infected cell in another strain of mice even if the same virus had attacked it. The implication of this discovery was that T lymphocytes must recognize two molecules on the infected cell in order to kill it. Those two molecules are the viral antigen and a major histocompatibilty antigen, which comes from the cell itself. They concluded that the immune system must simultaneously recognize a foreign and a so-called “self” antigen in or1996 Nobel Prizes Awarded; Discoveries in Immunology, Fullerene Chemistry and Superfluidity Recognized Science Briefs