It is my particular pleasure to pr
esent this award to Pierre Golstein, M.D., Ph.D., a scientist and gentleman admired for both his sagacity as a scientist and for his humble and caring demeanor. He trained at the Institut Pasteur in tumor biology with George Klein of the Karolinska Institutet and the Tumor Immunology Unit with Nicholas Avrion Mitchison at University College London. He has been working at the Centre d’Immunologie INSERM-CRS de Marseille-Luminy, where he served as Head of Group for many years and remains a Director of Research Emeritus. He has contributed much to the fields of immunology and cell biology, having published approximately 190 papers, among which he demonstrated that cytotoxic T cells could kill target cells, not only through the perforin-granzyme pathway, but also through the Fas pathway (Rouvier et al, Fas involvement in Ca++-independent T cell-mediated cytotoxicity. J Exper. Medi.177, 195-200 (1993) and was part of the team that cloned FasL (Suda, T., et al,. Molecular cloning and expression of the Fas ligand: a novel member of the tumor necrosis factor family. Cell 75, 1169-1178 (1993). He summarized these findings in a widely cited review (Golstein, P. & Griffiths, G. M. An early history of T cell-mediated cytotoxicity. Nat Rev Immunol 18, 527-535 (2018)). He won the prestigious Inserm Special Prize in 2018. This award recognized his foundational, pioneering work in the 1980s identifying the CTLA-4 molecule, an immune checkpoint receptor on T cells, which proved critical for modern cancer immunotherapy. His group’s analyses contributed to the now standard view that cytotoxic T cells use two main mechanisms: a perforin–granzyme–dependent granule exocytosis pathway and a Fas/Fas ligand–mediated pathway of apoptosis. This conceptual framework underpins much of modern tumor immunology, antiviral immunity, and immune pathology research. Pierre Golstein received the Grand Prix from the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale in 2008 and the ECDO Honorary Lecture / Career Award (2009) at the 17th Euroconference on Apoptosis. Drawing on an influence he attributes to Arthur Kornberg—that biochemical mechanisms are highly conserved—he used Dictyostelium to build a highly simplified model for cell death. He has pointed out that the genetically simple social amoeba (slime mold) does not have caspases but nevertheless can undergo a complex, autophagy-initiated and DIF-1 (Differentiation Initiating Factor) completed form of cell death.
Pierre descends from a highly distinguished intellectual lineage. The many people he has trained likewise consider him to be the source of their intellectual rigor and ability to conceptualize problems in original and thoughtful ways. You can count on him to ask the most provocative and insightful comments at meetings. We acknowledge and thank you for all that you have contributed to this field and to cell biology.
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