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Erik Thorsby, one of the true pioneers in the fields of HLA, immunogenetics and transplantation immunology passed away on March 23rd. His enthusiastic, boyish smile will no longer greet us. Erik had been living with prostate cancer for many years until he recently became severely ill, and the cancer conquered him.

Erik was born on July 13th in 1938. His father was the deputy chief for the fire department in Oslo at a time when this position came with an apartment at the main fire station, downtown Oslo. Here Erik spent his first years with his parents and two sisters. Later the family moved out of the city centre, closer to the woods surrounding Oslo where Erik among others enjoyed cross-country skiing – a habit that stayed with him throughout his life. Erik graduated from Medical school at the University of Oslo in 1963. Afterwards, he did mandatory service required to become a licensed doctor and then compulsory military service in the Northern part of Norway, at Saetermoen in Troms. Here he spent his days doing small surgery on civilians at the brigade’s hospital. However, there was not much to do in his spare time. Party life was sparse at Saetermoen. Thus, Erik had plenty of time to read and contemplate his future career. He had become interested in transplantations as a treatment for organ failure. If the kidneys failed, kidneys from a healthy relative or a cadaveric donor could replace them. Except for in genetically identical twins, kidney transplantation was only occasionally successful (Anonymous 1953). This problem intrigued Erik; this was what he wanted to pursue when his military service ended.

In 1965, Erik contacted the only immunologist in Oslo at that time, the late Morten Harboe who at that time worked at the Institute for Experimental Medical Research at Ullevaal Hospital. Erik explained that he wanted to study the immune reaction that could be a barrier against successful transplantations. Would it be possible to make antibodies that could determine whether a patient could tolerate a donor organ? Harboe was positive. He suggested that Erik started by immunising rabbits. Erik failed to raise HLA specific rabbit antibodies, which could help to identify donor-recipient pairs bearing compatible HLA-molecules. Erik quit and took a temporary job as a resident surgeon.

He did not give up his research plans though. He realised that if he should obtain antibodies with relevance for transplantations, he had to immunise people. This had already successfully been done by others (Rapaport et al. 1962). It seemed much more promising than rabbits. Erik transplanted donor skin grafts (diameter 1.5 cm) onto six volunteers who were his colleagues at the lab. Five of the six individuals produced allo-antisera with limited reactivities. From one of the volunteers Erik collected serum which identified the antigen MH (Thorsby and Kissmeyer-Nielsen 1968), later baptised HLA-B5. The MH serum had a very high titre, and it subsequently served as a typing serum in tissue typing labs worldwide. Another antigen was ET defined by a serum from Erik after immunising himself. This antigen later became HLA-B21. Erik defended his doctoral thesis with Harboe as supervisor in 1969. The thesis entitled “Leucocyte antigens and antibodies in man” included descriptions of HLA variants that later were named HLA-B15 and HLA-B27 in addition to the HLA-B5 and HLA-B21 variants. The same year as Erik defended his thesis, he spent four months in Aarhus—Denmark, in the laboratory of the late Flemming Kissmeyer-Nielsen. Many important papers came out of this collaboration.

When the Norwegian government in 1969 decided that organ transplantation should be centralised to Rikshospitalet (The National Hospital), Erik was headhunted to establish the Tissue Typing Laboratory. In 1984 this unit was renamed to the Institute of Transplantation Immunology when affiliated also with the University of Oslo. When the new Rikshospitalet campus was completed in 2000, the Institute of Transplantation Immunology was merged with the Institute of Immunology and Rheumatology to become the Institute of Immunology. Erik was the head of this merged, flagship institute until 2006. Erik was also the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Oslo from 1989 to 1990. The fact that Erik was the head of prosperous clinical service departments and university institutes for more than 40 years reflects his unique leadership capacity and leadership personality. Erik was dynamic, pragmatic and highly result oriented. He put high demands on himself and his co-workers. At the same time, Erik gave his co-workers a lot of freedom. Many talents developed under his wings. These talents on maturation, large in numbers, have populated leadership positions of academia and hospitals in Norway.

Erik as a scientist was curious and enthusiastic – his boyish spirit also surfaced here. The lab meetings were filled with a lot of discussions, ranging from What is the influence of HLA matching for graft survival? What is the importance of direct vs indirect allo-recognition? How do HLA molecules bind peptides? How does thymic selection of T cells happen? – to mention some topics. The lab meetings were the highlight of the week. At these meetings, Erik was never afraid to ask naïve questions. These naïve questions often went to the core of the matter. They were catalysts for the discussions to develop. Thus, Erik’s questions were important by themselves. However, more importantly, as they were posted in a non-show-off manner, they paved the road for other lab members to ask their questions, not being afraid that their questions should be perceived as stupid.

Erik and his laboratory contributed over the years with many important pieces of new knowledge. He provided together with Kissmeyer-Nielsen in 1970 the first evidence for the existence of HLA-C molecules (Thorsby et al. 1970). He published papers in Nature showing that beta2-microglobulin is part of HLA class I molecules expressed in lymphocyte membranes (Solheim and Thorsby 1974) and that human macrophages express HLA-D determinants (i.e. HLA class II molecules) (Hirschberg et al. 1976). Erik provided evidence that HLA class II molecules on endothelial cells are functional for antigen presentation (Hirschberg et al. 1980). He provided evidence that matching for HLA matters for graft survival of transplanted kidneys (Albrechtsen et al. 1978), even in cyclosporine-treated patients (Leivestad et al. 1999). He did seminal work with human T-cell clones and showed the importance of HLA restriction for antigen recognition (Paulsen et al. 1985; Qvigstad et al. 1983). Erik was particularly interested in the biological function of HLA molecules. This is probably why he took such an eager interest in trying to understand how certain HLA allotypes predispose to disease. Erik became a world expert in this field producing key papers on the HLA association of type 1 diabetes (Ronningen et al. 1989), multiple sclerosis (Spurkland et al. 1991) and coeliac disease (Lundin et al. 1993; Sollid et al. 1989). We were all fortunate to collaborate with Erik on different aspects of HLA biology, ranging from organ transplantation to the molecular underpinnings of HLA-association in coeliac disease. Erik received numerous prizes and awards for his scientific work, perhaps most notably the Nordic Anders Jahre medical award for young scientists in 1974. He received the EFI Ceppelini Award in 2011.

Erik’s influence went far beyond Norway. He was one of the founding figures and active participants of Scandiatransplant – an organisation made to facilitate the exchange of organs between the Nordic countries. Scandiatransplant celebrated its 50 years anniversary in 2019 – at that time more than 50 000 transplants had taken place within the organisation – indeed a huge success. Erik was the president for the Scandinavian Society for Immunology in the mid 1980ies. He was heavily involved in the International Transplantation Society where he served both as Secretary and Vice-president. Erik took an active role in the European Federation for Immunogenetics (EFI), where he was a member of the EFI Scientific Committee for several years and was also the President in the period 2002–2004. Erik took a particularly keen interest in the International Histocompatibility Workshops. He was a Councillor for many years, he highly prioritised the participation of his laboratory in all the workshops, and he was the chair of various HLA workshop components. We believe we do not overstate saying that Erik was one of the main driving forces in this extremely important work, done in a collaborative spirit with other scientists.

At scientific meetings, Erik often gave lectures. He was a much-wanted speaker. He gave lucid talks, speaking with huge enthusiasm. He managed to make complicated issues sound very simple. Although obviously having special gifts for speaking to an audience, part of Erik’s success came from his meticulous preparations, not least from making didactic slides. The importance of easy-to-read, but still very informative slides was something Erik carefully taught all his doctoral candidates—and something we have all benefited from.

Erik lived an active life outside of science. He spent much time out in nature. His wife Anne accompanied Erik in these outdoor activities. For many years, Erik had his own sailing boat often exploring the Norwegian coastline. However, later in life Erik gravitated to the Norwegian mountains. Talking to a journalist, on the top of the monumental peak Slogen (1564 m above the fjord), Erik told the journalist «These are moments in life you never forget». Due to his bonding to the mountains, Erik and Anne acquired an old picturesque farm, located in the outskirts of the massive mountain area Jotunheimen in the South of Norway. The farm has altogether 10 buildings, several of them more than 400 years old. Erik made his mission to restore these buildings back to their original shape.

It is strange that Erik is no more. There is no more an Erik to ask for advice and to discuss science with. Our thoughts go to Anne, to his children and the rest of Erik’s large family.

This obituary will be published by Scand J Immunol as well as on an EFI newsletter/EFI webpage.