HUMANISM AND PEACE
Dr. Robert w. Newburgh Head, Biological Sciences Division Office of the Chief of Naval
Research Arlington, VA 22217-5000
Dear Dr. Newburgh:
I was pleased that you should ask for a reprint of my paper in Nature, 1953. I enclose
the reprint, and also another reprint in which acknowledgment is made to the Office
of Naval Research.
I have always felt grateful to the Office of Naval Research for its continued support
of my early work in the field of molecular biology. Also, I was glad to serve as a
consultant to ONR.
During the period of about ten years, 1940 to 1950, I carried out, with my colleagues
and students, an extensive series of investigations to determine the nature of the
forces involved in the interactions between molecules of antibodies and the corresponding
antigens or haptenic groups. The results of the very extensive studies were published
in a series of papers, mainly in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. I was
led to the conclusion that there is a detailed complement-ariness in structure between
the combining region of the antibody and the corresponding (complementary) regions
of the antigens or haptenic groups. We were able to get quite detailed evidence about
the contribution of various factors - the shape and size of the atoms, how they are
arranged relative to one another, the van der Waals dispersion energy of attraction,
the attraction between opposite positive and negative charges, the formation of hydrogen
bonds, and others.
It was my feeling then that the question about biological specificity - its nature
and molecular basis - had been pretty well answered by these studies.
The studies, however, were carried out with antisera that were rather heterogenous.
For some time I have been thinking that it might well be possible to obtain more information
about the nature of these interactions, by the use of homogenous antibody preparations
obtained by cloning. Many of our earlier studies should, I think, be repeated with
monoclonal antibody preparations. Although I am moderately well satisfied with the
understanding of the nature of receptor-ligand (antibody-hapten) interactions that
we developed around 40 years ago, I am sure that additional insights could be obtained
by a rather extensive series of studies with monoclonal antibodies. I am sure that
this additional information would have value for all systems involving specific intermolecular
interaction.
I note that one of your fields of interest in molecular biology is receptor-ligand
interaction. If you think that ONR might be interested in receiving an application
from my associates and me, please send me the forms.
One of my former students and collaborators in the field of immunochemistry, George
Feigen, professor of physiology in Stanford University, died a year or two ago. There
is no one in our Institute working with monoclonal antibodies at the present time,
but we have space to set up a laboratory, if the funds were available. If we were
to embark on this program we would need to have complete support for it, extending
over a period of a few years.
I have been thinking of writing a book on the nature of the forces involved in these
interactions, based largely on our early work. If we were to get a grant or contract
to investigate the matter further, I should plan to delay writing the book until some
of the work with monoclonal antibodies had been done.
Sincerely,
LP
LP: dm
