Michael Woodruff - Early Career - Aberdeen

Aberdeen

In 1948, shortly after applying for the position in Melbourne, Woodruff moved from Sheffield to the University of Aberdeen where he was given a post as a senior lecturer, having not known where the Scottish city was beforehand. At Aberdeen, Woodruff was given better laboratory access under Professor Bill Wilson, and was also awarded a grant that allowed his wife to be paid for her services. He took advantage of this access and his wife's skills as a lab assistant to investigate in utero grafts (tissue grafts performed while the recipient was still in the womb). At the time, the surgical community hypothesized that if a recipient were given in utero grafts, he would be able to receive tissue from the donor later in life without risk of rejection. Woodruff's experiments with rats, however, produced negative results. Woodruff also commenced work on antilymphocyte serum for immunosuppression, with little initial success.

While in Aberdeen, Woodruff also visited the United States on a World Health Organization (WHO) Traveling Fellowship. During the visit, he met many of the leading American surgeons, an experience that increased his own desire to continue his work and research. After returning from the US, Woodruff experimented with the effects of cortisone and the impact of blood antigen on rejection. As part of his blood antigen studies, Woodruff found two volunteers with identical blood antigens and arranged for them to exchange skin grafts. When the grafts were rejected, Woodruff determined that rejection must be controlled by additional factors. In 1951 Woodruff was bestowed a Hunterian Professorship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England for his lecture The transplantation of homologous tissue and its surgical application.