On M edawar's ‘Actively acquired tolerance of foreign cells’

The fields of dermatology and transplantation biology have recently come together in clinical trials of bone marrow transplantation for severe inherited blistering skin diseases. But the original link between these two disciplines goes back to an extraordinary publication in 1953 in Nature by Peter Medawar and colleagues that explored the immunological basis of successful skin transplantation between different strains of mice and how ‘foreign’ antigens could be perceived as ‘self’. This work led to the emergence of blood and bone marrow transplantation and thus transformed the practice of modern medicine.