Emil R. Unanue - Education & Early Career

Education & Early Career

Emil Unanue received his doctorate from the University of Havana (Cuba) in 1960. He then immigrated to the United States and studied briefly at the University of Pittsburgh. Following that experience, Unanue was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, now The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. With his mentor, Dr. Frank J. Dixon, he made a series of contributions to the field of renal pathophysiology by examining the immune basis of glomerulonephritis. Unanue then joined the group headed by Dr. Brigitte Askonas at the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill in London. Together, Unanue & Askonas made the seminal observation that macrophages did not completely catabolize antigens, foreshadowing development of the field of antigen processing and presentation. In 1970, Unanue was given an appointment in the Department of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, where he quickly rose through the academic ranks to become the Mallinckrodt Professor of Immunopathology in 1974. While at Harvard University, he and his colleagues made observations in the areas of immunoglobulin capping on B cells and host defenses to bacteria such as Listeria monocytogenes. That work culminated in the conclusion that MHC molecules mediate the display of processed peptides to T cells.