WASHINGTON, D.C. -April 10, 1998-- William E. Paul, Chief, Laboratory of Immunology and former Director of AIDS Research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health, has been awarded the 1998 Abbott Laboratories Award in Clinical and Diagnostic Immunology. This award, which honors a scientist in the field of clinical or diagnostic immunology who has made significant contributions to understanding the immune system, will be presented at the General Meeting of the ASM, May 17-21, 1998 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. Paul received his A.B. from Brooklyn College and his M.D. from the State University of New York, Brooklyn. After a medical internship and residency at the Massachusetts Memorial Hospitals in Boston, Dr. Paul began his research career in the Endocrinology Branch of the National Cancer Institute. He continued as a postdoctoral fellow in immunology at New York University School of Medicine. In 1968, Dr. Paul moved to the Laboratory of Immunology at NIAID and became its chief in 1970.
He has made contributions to the field of cytokine biology, which is the study of proteins released from human cells in response to bacterial infection. He focused on the chemicals that cause T-cell reproduction, providing insights into both allergy and cancer, which is of vital importance in developing vaccines for microbial diseases.
In addition, he and his group were the first to demonstrate that blocking the action of antigens on the surface of human cells inhibited T-cell recognition. They showed that immune response genes controlled responses by determining the formation of antigen complexes that could be recognized by T-cells.
Dr. Paul has also made major contributions to the understanding of B-cell activation to produce antibodies. He pioneered the study of B-cell activation through receptor cross-linkage and made important advances in the understanding of B-cell signaling mechanisms.
He is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and a member of the Institute of Medicine, past president of the American Society for Clinical Investigations and of the American Association of Immunologists, and founding editor of the Annual Reveiew of Immunology. He was nominated by John L. Fahey, University of California School of Medicine, Los Angeles.
The American Society for Microbiology, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is the oldest and largest single biological membership organization, with over 40,000 members worldwide.