Elizabeth Marian Press (5 October 1920 – 30 December 2008) was a British immunologist, best known for her work with

Rodney Porter Prof Rodney Robert Porter, CH, FRS FRSE HFRCP (8 October 1917 – 6 September 1985) was a British biochemist and Nobel laureate. Education and early life He was born in Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire, England, the son of Joseph Lawrence Po ...

on the structure of antibodies. She worked side by side with Porter for 25 years, at the

National Institute for Medical Research The National Institute for Medical Research (commonly abbreviated to NIMR), was a medical research institute based in Mill Hill, on the outskirts of north London, England. It was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC); In 2016, the NIMR b ...

, St Mary's Hospital and in the Medical Research Council Immunochemistry Unit, and played a major role in him being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972.

Early life and education

Elizabeth Press was born on 5 October 1920 at 85 Crawford Street,

Marylebone Marylebone (usually , also , ) is a district in the West End of London, in the City of Westminster. Oxford Street, Europe's busiest shopping street, forms its southern boundary. An ancient parish and latterly a metropolitan borough, it me ...

, London, the only child of Sydney George Press, the manager of a zinc and plumbing business, and Hilda Marian Press (née Hall), who was a ladies’ maid before marriage. Press was 19 years old when the Second World War started, and joined the

Women's Royal Naval Service The Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS; popularly and officially known as the Wrens) was the women's branch of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. First formed in 1917 for the First World War, it was disbanded in 1919, then revived in 1939 at the ...

(WRNS, "the Wrens"). After the war, she obtained a BSc in Chemistry at Queen Mary College, London, and had research experience at the

Middlesex Hospital Middlesex Hospital was a teaching hospital located in the Fitzrovia area of London, England. First opened as the Middlesex Infirmary in 1745 on Windmill Street, it was moved in 1757 to Mortimer Street where it remained until it was finally clos ...

Medical School.

Career

On 1 October 1955, Press joined

’s research group at the

, Mill Hill, London. Her studies on antibodies were important in determining the chain structure, and particularly the observation that more than one gene was involved in coding for antibodies. Her work led to Porter's Nobel Prize in 1972, together with

Gerald Edelman Gerald Maurice Edelman (; July 1, 1929 – May 17, 2014) was an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work with Rodney Robert Porter on the immune system. Edelman's Nobel Prize-winning research concern ...

. The structural studies on antibodies were essential in the chain of scientific discoveries which led to the development of monoclonal antibodies by César Milstein, and led to the subsequent development of monoclonal antibodies which are now widely used as treatment for many cancers. ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

'' described Press as "a 'major' yet largely unknown contributor to the field of immunology". Although she only had a BSc herself, Press supervised the PhD research of others, including Nancy Hogg, now a group leader at

Cancer Research UK Cancer Research UK (CRUK) is the world's largest independent cancer research organization. It is registered as a charity in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man, and was formed on 4 February 2002 by the merger of The Cancer Research Campaign and t ...

The chain structure of antibodies

Press's work provided the first evidence that immunoglobulin heavy chains had variable regions similar to those observed in light chains, and identified a particularly variable segment, now known as complementarity-determining region 3. Her research also pointed to evidence that at least two genes are involved in the synthesis of the heavy chain.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Press, Elizabeth National Institute for Medical Research faculty British immunologists Alumni of Queen Mary University of London Scientists from Marylebone 1920 births 2008 deaths 20th-century British women scientists