Vitetta began her scientific career at New York University School of Medicine and graduate school. "The first time that I met Ellen was in 1966, when I gave an immunology lecture in the medical microbiology course. After the lecture, a young student came up to me and asked how B cells switch from producing IgM antibody to IgG antibody and why this switch was necessary. I told her I did not know. Even then, I sensed a spark and an intelligence about her that was unusual for such a young student. Ironically, some two decades later, Ellen and her group first described the cytokine, IL-4, that induces the switch from IgM to IgG," recalls Jonathan Uhr, today a professor in the Cancer Immunobiology Center at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where Vitetta is the director and holder of the Scheryle Simmons Patigian Distinguished Chair in ...
Ellen Vitetta
When Ellen Vitetta launched into the fifth Charlotte Friend Memorial Lecture on April 6 at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in San Francisco, the audience, expecting the tale of an immunotoxin's journey from bench to bedside, instead saw a hilarious presentation contrasting the male and female human brain. With huge distinctions in skills allocation, such as sex lobe vs. sex particle and commitment lobe vs. commitment neuron, the two displayed brains were equal for ski
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