Jean Dausset

Born in Toulouse on October 19 1916, son of Dr. Henri Dausset from the Pyrenees and Élisabeth Brullard from Lorraine Henri Dausset, from the Pyrenees, and Élisabeth Brullard, from Lorraine, completed his secondary education in Paris at the Lycée Michelet and became a Doctor of Medicine at the Paris Faculty of Medicine in 1945. An intern then assistant at the Paris Hospitals, he joined the army in Morocco in 1941. He was a transfusionist during the Tunisian campaign (1943) and the Normandy campaign in 1944. After the Liberation, he devoted himself to research at the Centre Régional and then the Centre National de Transfusion Sanguine. Together with Professor Robert Debré, he played an active role in the creation of the University Hospitals (1955-1958). In 1952, he made the first observation of massive leukoagglutination. In 1958, he described the first leukocyte antigen (Mac) of the future HLA system. Appointed Associate Professor (1958) then Professor of Immunohematology at the Paris Faculty of Medicine (1968), he was appointed Professor of Experimental Medicine at the Collège de France in 1977. He died on June 6 2009.

In scientific terms, he devoted his entire life to the study of the human major histocompatibility complex (HLA), whose importance in transplantation he demonstrated with the help of volunteer skin grafts. He published the first studies on possible associations between HLA tissue groups and diseases. In 1972, he organized the anthropological work that defined HLA groups in different populations around the world. In 1969, he founded France-Transplant.
The Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale research unit he headed at Hôpital Saint-Louis from 1968 to 1984 described numerous antigens of the HLA system and made many contributions to the human immune response. In 1983, Jean Dausset founded the Centre d'Étude du Polymorphisme Humain (Centre for the Study of Human Polymorphism), based at the Collège de France, which is helping to map the genetic and physical make-up of the human genome, and to locate genes responsible for genetic diseases.

Finally, he is contributing to the study of HLA molecules known as " tolerance ", in particular HLA-G, which inhibits the mother's reaction against her incompatible foetus.
HLA-G also plays a role in protecting tumors against the patient's rejection reaction.

His research continued in collaboration with Dr. Edgardo Carosella on the HLA-G molecule, which inhibits the immune response.
2003 was marked by the^3rd congress on the HLA-G molecule, which I chaired jointly with Dr. Edgardo Carosella and which was held at the Collège de France from July 7 to 9   2003.