£1.6m gift carries forward International Journal of Experimental Pathology’s legacy

As the International Journal of Experimental Pathology (IJEP) brings its long and distinguished history to a close, its trustees have made a significant gift of £1.6m to the Academy of Medical Sciences.  

Led by trustees' Chair Professor Ian Lauder FMedSci, a former treasurer of the Academy, the donation will support excellent biomedical and health research and the people who make it possible, while honouring the journal's remarkable legacy.  

Throughout its history, the IJEP advanced knowledge in pathology while helping to nurture the next generation of clinical researchers, ensuring that scientific inquiry, academic excellence and opportunities for young clinical scientists could continue to benefit medicine. The gift carries that purpose forward beyond the lifetime of the journal.  

The gift also recognises the close connections between pathology, immunology and the Academy’s origins. To mark the occasion, Professor Sir Keith Peters GBE FRS FMedSci, former President of the Academy and Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, reflects the contribution of pathology to medical science and clinical practice, and its role in the development of the Academy itself.

Professor Ian Lauder FMedSci, Chair of the Trustees of the International Journal of Experimental Pathology, said:

For generations, the journal provided a home for research that advanced understanding of disease and improved patient care. It was also founded on a belief in nurturing the people who would take that work forward, particularly the next generation of clinical researchers. As we bring its affairs to a close, it was important to the Trustees that this purpose should continue. We are delighted that this gift will enable the Academy of Medical Sciences to support excellent biomedical and health research and create opportunities for the people who will shape its future, ensuring that the Journal’s impact extends well beyond its final edition.

Professor Sir Andrew Morris CBE FRSE PMedSci, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences, said:

We are deeply grateful to the trustees of the International Journal of Experimental Pathology for their generosity and for the confidence they have placed in the Academy. We are honoured to receive this gift and to carry forward the Journal's remarkable legacy by supporting the people, ideas and research that will improve health for future generations. It is particularly fitting given the legacy of our Founder President, Professor Sir Peter Lachmann, whose contribution to immunology and commitment to ensuring medical science had a strong and independent voice continue to shape the Academy today.

Opinion: In praise of pathology

By Professor Sir Keith Peters GBE FRS FMedSci

The Academy has provided me—as its only former living President to have been a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists—with an excuse to write in praise of pathology. The occasion is a donation to the Academy from the Trustees of the now-defunct International Journal of Experimental Pathology, which began life as the British Journal of Experimental Pathology. Thanks are due to the Chair of the Trustees, our former Treasurer, Professor Ian Lauder FMedSci, a close friend of our Founding President Sir Peter Lachmann, who devoted more than two decades of service to the journal.

The closure of a scientific journal is always sad. For much of the twentieth century the British Journal of Experimental Pathology was the natural home for British research into the mechanisms of disease. Its most famous paper was Alexander Fleming’s 1929 description of penicillin—arguably the most consequential any medical journal ever carried! The finest accounts of that discovery, and of Howard Florey’s subsequent development of penicillin into the first antibiotic, were written by Gwyn Macfarlane FRS, himself a distinguished pathologist whose pioneering work on haemostasis earned him election to the Royal Society.

The journal published papers by Henry Dale and Howard Florey, and later by Robin Coombs, whose eponymous antiglobulin test transformed clinical immunology. Together with Philip Gell, Coombs also produced Clinical Aspects of Immunology, the textbook that introduced the famous classification of hypersensitivity reactions. At Cambridge, Coombs inspired Peter Lachmann to study complement, work that led ultimately to his appointment as the Foundation Professor of Immunology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital.

John Humphrey published a classic paper in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology demonstrating the role of polymorphonuclear leucocytes in the Arthus reaction, thereby establishing the cellular basis of antibody-mediated inflammation. His career exemplified the remarkable breadth of pathology in post-war Britain. Trained as a clinical pathologist, he served as Assistant Pathologist at the Central Middlesex Hospital before joining the Medical Research Council, where he initially worked on the biological standardisation of antibiotics and enzymes and later created, at the National Institute for Medical Research, one of the world’s leading centres of immunology. In the final years of his career he succeeded Peter Lachmann at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School.

Pathology also profoundly shaped my own career. I began with an MRC Clinical Research Fellowship in the Department of Experimental Pathology in Birmingham, where Philip Gell held the first Chair of Immunology in the United Kingdom. In 1969 I was appointed Lecturer in Medicine and Consultant Nephrologist at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, largely because Christopher Booth, the newly appointed Professor of Medicine, wished to shift the emphasis of his department away from applied physiology towards research on disease mechanisms, particularly immunology. That change—from measuring function to understanding disease—was, in retrospect, emblematic of the wider transformation of British academic medicine in the last third of the 20th century.

An invaluable guide throughout those years was Robert H. Heptinstall’s Pathology of the Kidney (1966), itself a masterpiece of medical writing. Trained at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, Heptinstall went on to become Professor of Pathology at Johns Hopkins, where he established one of the world’s leading centres of renal pathology. He later became a friend and exemplified the international influence of British pathology. The introduction of needle renal biopsy, coupled with immunofluorescence, transformed nephrology by allowing immunoglobulins and complement to be demonstrated directly in diseased tissue. That revolution underpinned much of the renal immunopathology pursued by my colleagues in pathology and immunology and by my own group in medicine.

Without Peter Lachmann there would almost certainly have been no Academy of Medical Sciences in anything like its present form. The idea took shape during his Presidency of the Royal College of Pathologists and came to fruition while he was Biological Secretary of the Royal Society. That the Academy should now benefit from the legacy of a pathology journal is therefore entirely fitting. The history of that journal reminds us that pathology has contributed to medicine not merely by describing disease, but by explaining it—and in doing so has repeatedly transformed clinical practice. Its future, as much as its past, lies in understanding disease: the conditions that still defeat us are, almost without exception, the ones we least understand.  

We need more academic pathologists.