Progress Toward A Cellular Engineering

Rapidly developing understanding of the lymphoid system and immunologic function make these exciting days in immunobiology. When I began my studies of the relation of structure to function in the lymphoid system nearly 27 years ago, the function of lymphocytes was enigmatic; we could see the role of plasma cells in antibody production only as through a distant haze. Understanding of the function of whole organs, including the thymus and spleen, was almost entirely lacking. The meaning of the beautiful anatomic organization of the lymphoid cells within the peripheral lymphoid organs, eg, lymph nodes, was completely unknown. Small, medium, and large lymphocytes were noted in the peripheral blood, but little was known about from whence they came, where they went, or what they did. It had already been proposed that lymphocytes carried or produced antibodies.1Some thought that they exhibited a sort of suicidal dissolution under the influence of