Emil R. Unanue

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Emil R. Unanue (born September 13, 1934) is an immunologist, and Paul and Ellen Lacy Professor of Pathology at Washington University School of Medicine. Unanue is a past recipient of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research(1995), the Gairdner Foundation International Award(2000) and the Robert Koch Gold Medal from Germany. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He previously served as chair of the National Academy of Sciences Section of Microbiology and Immunology.

Unanue is internationally recognized as a leader in understanding how the immune system identifies foreign material, known to scientists as antigen, and how immune system T cells respond to it. In the early 1980s, Unanue's research group uncovered a critical component of how T cells recognize invaders. He and Paul M. Allen, the Robert L. Kroc Professor of Pathology and Immunology in Washington University School of Medicine, discovered that antigen-presenting cells bind these peptides to a special group of molecules known as the major histocompatibility complex.

Dr. Unanue graduated in medicine in 1960 from the University of Havana, Cuba. He trained from 1961 to 1970 in Pittsburgh and La Jolla in the United States and at the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London. He joined Harvard Medical School in 1970. In 1974, he became Mallinckrodt Professor of Immunopathology. In 1985 he moved to Washington University School of Medicine, where he became Mallinckrodt Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pathology and Pathologist-in-Chief of the Barnes-Jewish Hospital.