Jean Lindenmann

Jean Lindenmann (18 September 1924 – 15 January 2015) was a Swiss virologist and immunologist. Lindenmann, together with his colleague, the British virologist Alick Isaacs, co-discovered and identified interferon in 1957 through their research at the National Institute for Medical Research. Interferon, a group of proteins involved in immune regulation and defence against viruses, is now used to treat a variety of conditions, including hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis, and some cancers. He served in the Swiss Armed Forces.

Interferon research While working together at the NIMR, Lindenmann and Isaacs noticed that if they killed viruses using heat and applied the dead viruses to living cells, those cells became resistant to further infections from live viruses. Lindenmann discovered that interferons acted indirectly to protect resistant mice by switching on a gene which produces a particular protein to defend against influenza.

Personal life Lindenmann married Ellen Buechler in 1957; she died in 2007. The couple had two sons. Lindenmann died from prostate cancer at a hospice in Zurich, Switzerland, on 15 January 2015, at the age of 90.

Key papers Isaacs A, Lindenmann J. (1957) Virus interference. I. The interferon. Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B: Biological Sciences 147: 258–67 Isaacs A, Lindenmann J, Valentine RC. (1957) Virus interference. II. Some properties of interferon. Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B: Biological Sciences 147: 268–73 Staeheli P, Haller O, Boll W, Lindenmann J, Weissmann C. (1986) Mx protein: constitutive expression in 3T3 cells transformed with cloned Mx cDNA confers selective resistance to influenza virus. Cell 44: 147–58