Maria de Sousa

Maria Ângela Brito de Sousa (17 October 1939 – 14 April 2020) was a Portuguese immunologist, science leader poet and writer. She gained international recognition as a medical researcher, as the author of several seminal scientific papers: she was the first to describe thymus-dependent (or T cell) areas in 1966, a fundamental discovery in the mapping of peripheral lymphoid organs; she coined the term "ecotaxis" in 1971, to describe the phenomenon of cells of different origins to migrate and to organize among themselves in very specific lymphoid areas. In the 1980s she focused on the study of hereditary hemochromatosis, an iron overload genetic disease.

Early life and education Maria de Sousa was born in Lisbon in 1939. Her father was a naval officer and her mother a homemaker.

She graduated from medical school at the University of Lisbon in 1963. In 1964, she moved to London to work at the then Imperial Cancer Research Fund's Experimental Biology Laboratories.

Career She won a Gulbenkian Foundation scholarship. and from 1964 to 1966 de Sousa worked with Delphine Parrott studying mice who had their thymus removed. She established a Masters Program in Immunology

Distinctions National orders

Selected publications Parrott, DMV, de Sousa, MAB, and East, J. "Thymus-dependent areas in the lymphoid organs of neonatally thymectomized mice". Journal of Experimental Medicine; 123: 191–1966. Parrott, DMV and De Sousa, MAB. "Changes in thymus-dependent areas of lymph nodes after immunological stimulation". Nature, 212: 1316-,1966. De Sousa, MAB, Parrott, DMV and Pantelouris. "Lymphoid tissues in mice with congenital aplasia of the thymus". Clinical and Experimental Immunology 4: 637-,1969. Sousa, MD "Kinetics of distribution of thymus and marrow cells in peripheral organs of the mouse – Ecotaxis". Clinical and Experimental Immunology 9: 371-,1971. Broxmeyer, HE, Smithyman, A, Eger, RR, Meyer, PA and De Sousa, M. "Identification of Lactoferrin as granulocyte derived inhibitor of colony stimulating activity production". Journal of Experimental Medicine 148: 1052–1067, 1977. Dörner, M., Silverstone, A., Nishyia, K., de Sostoa, A., Munn, G and De Sousa, M. "Ferritin synthesis by Human T lymphocytes". Science, 209: 1019–1021. De Sousa M., Reimão, R., Lacerda, R., Hugo, P. and Kaufman. S. "Iron overload in β2 microglobulin deficient mice". Immunology Letters 39: 105–111. 1994. Santos, M., Schilham, MW, Rademakers, LHPM, Marx, JJM, de Sousa, M. and Clevers, H. "Defective iron homeostasis in beta 2-microglobulin knockout mice recapitulates Hereditary Hemochromatosis in man". Journal of Experimental Medicine 184: 1975–1985. 1996. De Almeida SF, Carvalho IF, Cardoso CS, Cordeiro JV, Azevedo JE, Neefjes J, De Sousa M. (2005) "HFE crosstalks with the MHC class I antigen presentation pathway". Blood 106:971-7. De Sousa, M. 2011. "An outsider's perspective-ecotaxis revisited: an integrative review of cancer environment, iron and immune system cells". Integrative Biology, 3, 343–349. Hoshino A, Costa-Silva B, Shen TL, et al. (2015). "Tumour exosome integrins determine organotropic metastasis". Nature 527(7578):329-35. Epub 2015 Oct 28.