Immunogenetics: Open Access
Open Access

Pawel Kisielow

Biography

Pawel Kisielow is a professor emeritus at the Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Wroclaw, Poland. From 1972-1974 he worked as a postdoc at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in the laboratories of Lloyd J. Old and Edward A. Boyse where he, together with Hiroshi Shiku and John Hirst obtained first unequivocal evidence for functional and phenotypic heterogeneity of T cells and identified their two major subsets, presently known as CD4+8- (CD4) and CD4-8+ (CD8). Between 1985 and 2000 he spent several years at the Basel Institute for Immunology closely collaborating with Harald von Boehmer on several aspects of T cell development and selection. Together with their colleagues they demonstrated that CD4 and CD8 T cells are generated in the thymus from CD4+8+ thymocytes in the process of positive selection and that self-antigen induced deletion of immature CD4+8+ tymocytes represents central mechanism of immunological tolerance.

Research Interest

Immunology, Lymphocyte development