In talks in the 1970s, Niels Jerne and Jan Klein predicted the end of immunology research because all fundamental questions would soon be resolved and there would be nothing of interest left to investigate. Decades later, immunology research is still going strong. The fact that on 3 October 2011, the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine to another three eminent immunologists attests to this.Jules Hoffmann, of the University of Strasbourg in France, and Bruce Beutler, formerly of the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, were awarded one half of the Dollars 1.45 million prize for their discoveries about the activation of innate immunity. In their original 1996 Cell paper (http:// www.cell.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867400801725), Hoffmann and Bruno Lemaitre reported that the Drosophila Toll gene, previously associated only with a developmental role, is also important for the innate immune response to fungal and Gram-positive bacteria.
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