Bruce A. Beutler

Bruce A. Beutler (born December 29, 1957, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.) is an American immunologist and corecipient, with French immunologist Jules A. Hoffmann and Canadian immunologist and cell biologist Ralph M. Steinman, of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his “discoveries concerning the activation of the innate immune system.” The innate immune system is the body’s first line of defense against infection by potential pathogens (disease-causing entities), which include viruses and bacteria.

Beutler was raised in Arcadia, California, a small city in Los Angeles county. His father was a scientist and physician and his mother a technical writer. From a young age, Beutler was interested in nature and biology, and, after reading American geneticist and biophysicist James D. Watson’s Molecular Biology of the Gene (1965), he became interested in the then-burgeoning field of molecular biology. By age 14 Beutler could purify proteins and characterize enzymes, skills he learned in his father’s laboratory at the City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte (near Arcadia). The young Beutler also worked in the laboratory of Japanese-born American geneticist and evolutionary biologist Susumu Ohno, who was known for his research on sex determination and gene duplication.

Beutler was a precocious student, skipping several grades in high school and graduating from the University of California, San Diego, with a degree in biology at age 18. Taking his father’s advice, Beutler next decided to acquire a deeper knowledge of pathology and pharmacology and enrolled as a medical student at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1981. In 1983, following an internship in internal medicine and a residency in neurology at the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Beutler became a researcher at Rockefeller University in New York City, later joining the university’s faculty and working as a physician at the university’s hospital. In 1986 he returned to the Southwestern Medical Center, this time working as an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and as a professor in the department of internal medicine. He transferred to the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, in 2000, where he served as a professor in the department of immunology and, beginning in 2007, as chairman of the department of genetics. In 2011 he announced his return to the Southwestern Medical Center.

Beutler’s Nobel Prize-winning research took place primarily between 1984 and 1998. During that time he made a series of discoveries that revealed how cells detect infection and how the innate immune system is activated in response to infection. This work began with the isolation of mouse tumour necrosis factor (TNF), a protein that regulates inflammatory and immune responses. Beutler subsequently discovered and characterized properties of TNF that suggested it contributed to immune system-generated inflammation. Using recombinant DNA technology, he proceeded to create molecules capable of inhibiting TNF, which proved effective in mitigating inflammation. One of these inhibitors, etanercept (Enbrel), became widely used in the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, and psoriasis.

The last of Beutler’s major breakthroughs was his discovery of the receptor molecule for lipopolysaccharide (LPS; sometimes also called endotoxin), which he first encountered during research as an undergraduate. The discovery provided further insight into the initial steps leading to inflammation and led to his involvement in the discovery in the late 1990s of mutations in a mouse gene known as Tlr4 (toll-like receptor 4) that contribute to septic shock. Whereas the normal Tlr4 protein recognizes LPS and thereby mediates the immune response to bacteria carrying the toxin, the mutated version results in unchecked bacterial growth, such that when the body reacts, large quantities of bacteria-destroying immune molecules are released into the bloodstream. This violent attack results in a massive release of LPS, causing tissue damage, low blood pressure, and reduced organ function—symptoms typical of septic shock. Much of Beutler’s later research maintained a focus on elucidating the role of genetics in immunity.

Beutler was the recipient of multiple awards, including the 2004 Robert Koch Prize (shared with Hoffmann and Japanese scientist Shizuo Akira), the 2009 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (shared with Steinman and American immunologist Charles A. Dinarello), and the 2011 Shaw Prize (shared with Hoffmann and Russian scientist Ruslan M. Medzhitov). Beutler was also elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2008).