All great things have modest beginnings as is the birth of modern Immunology. In the twentieth century at a place removed from the influence of the east began something that still shrouds in mystery. For Wracks, it is the selection for Immunology Research as an elective because at the big U at that time, everything was about basic research. The Immunology team located in the west wing of the Biology building in the science quad and the Wracks is now part of the team. The preceptors are Eli and Dr. M with an Israeli with a funny sounding name as consulting physician. They work with mice and the Wracks is going to work with mice until he moves to the Medical Center next year. The mice they use as experimental objects are Balb/c and C57. Balb/c mice are white spotted brown and c57 are all grey. These strains represent highly inbred lines making their genes almost identical between lines and suitable for experimental design. The Wracks and mike are going to assay bone marrow transplantation in line and between lines as a model for human bone marrow transplants. The major organ of immunity in mice is the spleen. A scientist challenges the spleen with an antigen and then harvests the spleen and does identity assays on the cells. The identity assay Eli and Dr. M use is the plaque-forming assay. A scientist harvests a primed mouse spleen, homogenizes it, blends it with gelatin containing the antigen identity being assayed on a petri dish and then counts the rings forming on the disk. If rings form which are antigen-antibody complexes, then this connotes an antigen-antibody reaction and a positive test.
Eli is tall and of Scandinavian descent. His long curly hair and grey eyes are set in a pair of worn jeans and tee shirt immersed in Mexican huarache sandals. Today he wants the Wracks and Mike to drive to the radiation facility and irradiate some c57 mice with a cobalt 60 bomb so he and Dr. M can practice syngeneic bone marrow transplants. Mike has a car and the Wracks carry the cage of mice to the facility at the Veterans Administration. They leave the car at a parking lot which also was a radioactive waste dump and is still hot. The administration paved over the dump with asphalt and conclude that people parking there will suffer little radiation exposure due to the brevity of their stay. This is the great and opulent veteran’s administration on the west side of town and if a person knows where to go and what to look for, they can find an irradiation center with a cobalt 60 bomb in the center. Mike and the Wracks find the building that no one knows about, enter it and display their student identifications to a soldier that guards the entrance to the building. The physicist that maintains the bomb welcomes them and crosses off their names on the schedule that only he possesses. The irradiation room is a small ten foot by ten-foot concrete grey room with beacon lights hanging from the ceiling and in the center is a podium that elevates to expose the bomb.
Be sure you are out of the room when the beacons and sirens go on exhort the physicist in charge.
Mike has walked out of the room and the Wracks sets the cage near the podium sunk in a lead scabbard in the ground. The wracks make sure the door is open when he sets down the cage of mice because without the door closed the bomb will not elevate. Keeping his eye on the door, he runs out, the door closes, lights like a police car flash and siren goes off and an atomic bomb like scenario happens in the room. The Wracks smells lightning like a strike at the beginning of a rain storm and time freezes and then everything becomes quiet. The door opens and the Wracks goes in to fetch the cage. The mice are still alive but look strange like they have just been through a savage fight and they sweat and their fur is matted and askew. Mike and the Wracks thank the Physicist and take the cage back to the Biology facility.
The mice have no white cells now says Eli. We will transplant syngeneic and allogenic bone marrow cells in their abdomens and see if they take. If they can mount an antibody-antigen response on a plaque-forming assay then the transplant is a success. If the mouse dies with allogenic cells which are mouse cells from other inbred lines than this is graft versus host reaction and cells from another similar but different strain attack the host identity antigens.
The results from our group are as follows: cells from genetically identical mice usually but not always are accepted by the host. This means that there is enough genetic variability in identical inbred strains to prevent bone marrow transplants. Allogenic cells from an entirely different but related strain never accept the host antigens and are rejected. They conclude that bone marrow transplants do not work and should not be used in humans. Cells from similar but different lines are universally rejected.
Every Friday the group meets in a conference room at the medical facility and Eli and Dr. M bring beer and pretzels and discuss research findings with their students. The Wracks is not yet 21 and is under age but he drinks beer and eats pretzels and chips and listens to the high-tech research discussions. He is on his third Styrofoam cup of beer and is feeling good. He wolfs down the pretzels because he is starving and it is a free meal. There is a virologist with thick glasses and wiry hair at the get-together as are other graduate students in Microbiology. Eli is animated and his research excites him and he speaks and the Wracks listens with his good drunk buzz.
Our next phase of research connotes the transplantation of tumor cells. Mice will be induced to produce leukemic cells and we will introduce them to syngeneic and allogeneic lines and note if there is an antibody response to cancer. In other words, is cancer transplantable, and to what extent do mice make an immune response to transplanted cancer.
The concepts are highly technological and cutting edge but the laboratory work is very simple to perform in context and the Wracks is part of it for two quarters, until the summer session. Summer is now here and the Wracks has to take an English class to satisfy his major and he folds his hands in prayer at the student cuad on the north campus early in the morning on the steps of Bunch hall. No one could imagine what he has been doing for half a year and the findings are revolutionary and poignant. Not even Crandalman has inkling of what the Wracks is doing in the school of Microbiology in the Biology building.
You will never get into Medical School with a B average asserts Crandalman. You should become a lawyer like me.
It really doesn’t matter says the wracks. It really doesn’t matter.