Deborah Doniach: Discovering Thyroid Autoimunity; the end of horror autotoxicus.

Deborah Doniach: Discovering Thyroid Autoimunity; the end of horror autotoxicus. Thyroid. 2020 Apr 17;: Authors: Bahn RS, Doniach T, McLachlan S Abstract Deborah Doniach MD, FRCP was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1912. She attended high school at the Lycée Molière and medical school at the Sorbonne in Paris. Deborah married Israel (Sonny) Doniach in 1933. Following the births of their two children, she resumed her studies at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School in London, graduating in 1945. After additional training in Immunopathology and Endocrinology, Dr. Doniach joined the faculty in the Department of Immunology at the Middlesex Hospital and rose to become Honorary Consultant Immunopathologist and full Professor of Clinical Immunology. During her career, Deborah enjoyed a long and fruitful collaboration with the chemist and immunologist Ivan Roitt. From their partnership sprang the seminal discovery that Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT) is an autoimmune disease in which circulating antibodies target thyroglobulin, a normal thyroid protein. In addition, they demonstrated a separate antibody cytotoxic to thyrocytes, later found to target thyroid peroxidase (TPO). These novel insights ran counter to the prevailing scientific dogma contending that antibodies target only non-self antigens. Thus the field of research into thyroid autoimmunity, and indeed into autoimmune diseases in general, was born. This work spawned a cadre of futur...
Source: Thyroid : official journal of the American Thyroid Association - Category: Endocrinology Tags: Thyroid Source Type: research