Emil R. Unanue - Area of Expertise

Area of Expertise

Unanue is internationally recognized as an expert on immunological function, vis-a-vis the identification and T-cell response to foreign material, known to scientists as antigen. His work initiated a field of study known as antigen presentation; it is critical to the development of vaccines and underlies an understanding of microbial immunity and autoimmune diseases.

In the late 1970s, it was recognized that T lymphocytes could not recognize antigen directly and instead required an interaction with another specialized cell known as the antigen presenting cell. Nobel Prize winners, Rolf Zinkernagel and Peter C. Doherty showed that this recognition also required the antigen-presenting cell to be from the same genetic background as the T-cell. That observation, called MHC restriction, led to a conundrum; namely, that the ability of a T cell to recognize foreign antigen also required that it recognize "self." With Paul M. Allen, Ph.D., the Robert L. Kroc Professor at Washington University School of Medicine, Unanue discovered that peptides from foreign antigens were bound to a group of molecules known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). This peptide-MHC complex was shown to be recognized by T cells. Although the latter hypothesis was initially greeted with intense skepticism, a large body of work, generated over the last two decades, has confirmed its validity.