Nobel Laureate: Charles Robert Richet

 

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1913

"in recognition of his work on anaphylaxis"

Charles Robert Richet (1850 - 1935) won the Noble Prize in 1913 for discovering the phenomenon known as anaphylaxis. This is a condition where the administration of an antigen causes severe symptoms, even death. Richet found that anaphylactic shock occurs only after an animal had been previously immunized and even then only after some days had passed.

It appeared as though the first immunization took several days to develop but when the process was complete a second attempt at boosting immunization causes a severe reaction. Anaphylactic shock was rare, it only happens in a small percentage of cases. We are familiar with the risk when people are known to be allergic to peanuts or insect stings.

Today we know what causes the symptoms of anaphylaxis; it's due to massive release of histamines, prostaglandins, and leukotrienes from mast cells. The release of these chemicals produces rapid heartbeat, sweating, and constriction of the airways. The symptoms can be relieved, and death prevented, by rapid treatment with epinephrine.

The primary cause of most anaphyaxis is overproduction of antigen-specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) molecules on the mast cells.¹ It's the IgE molecules that interact with the antigen to cause release of histamines etc. It's not known why some antigens lead to overproduction of IgE such that subsequent exposure to the same antigen cause a massive allergic reaction. (Normal antibodies are immunoglobulin G or IgG.²)

Immunology is complicated. That's why we can't cure asthma and other allergic reactions even though the phenomena have been intensely studied for more than 100 years.

Here's an excerpt from the 1913 Presentation Speech.
THEME:
Nobel Laureates

In an age in which the leading members of the medical profession tend to concentrate on innumerable experiments demonstrating the growing immunity of the organism towards poisons already resisted successfully once, you, Sir, have found that in certain cases a completely opposite result is produced. You did not restrict yourself to this isolated observation: studied in depth by you, it has become the foundation on which you have based the evidence of a reaction that is sometimes just as regular as the phenomenon of immunity. We are not concerned solely with specific prophylaxis; thanks to you, we are now aware of a specific anaphylaxis.

We do not discount the work of those who, following your lead, have observed similar phenomena, but to you goes the honour of having established the basis of a new biological reaction, anaphylaxis, and of having been the first to demonstrate it clearly. Thereby you have opened up to medical science an enormous field of study as yet unexplored. The Staff of Professors of the Caroline Institute wishes to reward you for this achievement by conferring on you the prize instituted by our compatriot Alfred Nobel for those «who have made the most important discovery in the field of physiology or medicine».

Please accept the warm congratulations of the Institute and myself, together with the wish of us all that success will continue to crown your devoted work.

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1. I do not mean to imply that IgE molecules are produced by mast cells. They are not.

2. There are several different classes (isotypes) of antibodies; IgG, IgD, IgM, IgA, and IgE. The most abundance class is IgG—that's the one most often depicted in the textbooks. It's probably the type most people think about when they think about antibodies. I did not mean to imply that the other classes are not "normal."

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