Emil Raphael Unanue (September 13, 1934 – December 16, 2022[1]) was a Cuban-American immunologist and Paul & Ellen Lacy Professor Emeritus at Washington University School of Medicine.
Unanue initiated a field of study known as antigen presentation; it is critical to the development of vaccines and underlies an understanding of microbial immunity and autoimmune diseases.
Nobel Prize winners, Rolf Zinkernagel and Peter C. Doherty showed that this recognition also required the antigen-presenting cell to be from the same genetic background as the T-cell.
That observation, called MHC restriction, led to a conundrum; namely, that the ability of a T cell to recognize foreign antigen also required that it recognize "self" With Paul M. Allen, the Robert L. Kroc Professor at Washington University School of Medicine, Unanue discovered that peptides from foreign antigens were bound to a group of molecules known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC).
Unanue's research focused on the molecular mechanisms of antigen processing, the immunological basis of autoimmune diabetes, and immune responses to intracellular bacteria.