The Sir William Dunn School of Pathology

University of Oxford

Background

The University department, which is entirely experimental and has no service commitment, was installed in a new purpose-built laboratory in 1926. This had been endowed by a munificent benefaction made in his will by Sir William Dunn. The handsome building, in Queen Anne style, is set in its own gardens. The laboratories were exemplary in their time and, with only some internal modification, still function effectively today.

The Sir William Dunn School of Pathology (1937)

The first Professor of Pathology, Georges Dreyer, was a Dane. He was appointed in 1907 and remained in post until he died in 1934.

George Dreyer

He had a mathematical bent and carried out some of the earliest quantitative assays on immunological reactions to infection. His special interest was in the immunology of tuberculosis and he was deeply involved in an effort to produce a vaccine for this disease. He was succeeded in 1936 by Howard Walter Florey, an Australian who had made England his home.

Howard W. Florey

Florey was a physiologist by training and was dedicated to the application of physiological and chemical methods to pathology. His main interests were in the physiology of the cells in the gut, inflammatory reactions and atherosclerosis. He is, however, best known for the work done under his direction that demonstrated the therapeutic value of penicillin and thus ushered in the age of antibiotics. The purification of penicillin was achieved by Norman Heatley and Edward Abraham, the latter eventually determining its chemical structure.

Penicillin structure

After penicillin, the work on antibiotics was continued in the Dunn School by Abraham and Guy Newton, who during the 1950s discovered, purified and established the structure of cephalosporin C, the first of the cephalosporin family of antibiotics. This compound and the ring structure on which it was based were patented, and both Newton and Abraham set up trusts out of the royalties that they received. The E P Abraham Research Fund and the Guy Newton Trust are dedicated to the support of medical, biological and chemical research in the Dunn School, Lincoln College and the University of Oxford.

Penicillin researchers (c1940)

During the 1950s, James Gowans revealed the life cycle of the lymphocyte, whose role was at that time completely obscure. Gowans showed that the small lymphocyte continuously recirculated from the blood to the lymph and back again to the blood. He later demonstrated that this cell was at the centre of the immunological response.

James Gowans

A Cellular Immunology Research Unit, under the honorary direction of Gowans, was established in the Dunn School by the Medical Research Council, and this led to the construction of an additional building. Gowans remained the Honorary Director of the Unit until he left in 1977 to become the Secretary of the Medical Research Council.

Florey was succeeded in 1963 by Henry Harris, another expatriate Australian. Harris's main interest was in cell biology and especially what was later to become the science of somatic cell genetics. Harris developed the technique of cell fusion for the study of the physiology and genetics of higher cells. He demonstrated that cell fusion provided a general method for the amalgamation of different cell types across the barriers imposed by species differences and by the process of differentiation. This techique was one of the main roots of somatic cell genetics and, in due course, resulted in the production of monoclonal antibodies.

Henry Harris

By means of cell fusion Harris and Stephen Goss devised the first systematic method for determining the order of genes along the human chromosome and the distances between them. In 1969 Harris showed that when a wide range of malignant tumour cells were fused with normal fibroblasts, the resulting hybrids were not malignant and had the morphological character of fibroblasts. This meant that there were normal genes that had the ability to suppress malignancy. These genes are now known as tumour suppressor genes and work on them has become a world-wide industry. Harris's research was supported mainly by the Cancer Research Campaign.

Gowans was replaced as Honorary Director of the MRC Cellular Immunology Research Unit by Alan Williams, yet another Australian. Williams was mainly concerned with the structural and biochemical aspects of immunological reactions and, in the course of a distinguished programme of work in this area, discovered the immunoglobulin superfamily.

Alan F. Williams

Williams was elected to succeed Harris in 1992 but died before he was able to take up the Chair.

Harris remained Head of the Department until 1995 when the new appointee, Herman Waldmann, was able to take up the post. Waldmann's principal interest is in the study of immunological tolerance and application of immunology to the clinic. To cater for this clinical interest, the Therapeutic Antibody Centre, an outstation of the Dunn School, has been built on the Churchill Hospital site.