George Mackaness | |
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| Born | 20 August 1922 Sydney, Australia |
| Died | 4 March 2007 (aged 84) Charleston, South Carolina, U.S. |
| Education | University of Sydney |
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| Spouse | Gwynneth Patterson (m. 1945) |
| Children | 1 |
| Relatives | George Mackaness (uncle) |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | |
George Bellamy Mackaness (20 August 1922 – 4 March 2007) was an Australian professor of microbiology, immunologist, writer and administrator, who researched and described the life history of the macrophage. He showed that by infecting mice with intracellular bacteria, macrophages could be activated to attack other bacteria, triggering further research on "macrophage activation", a term he has come to be associated with.
Mackaness completed his early medical training at Sydney Hospital. After the Second World War he moved to London to study pathology before taking up a graduate post at Howard Florey's Laboratory in Oxford. There he studied the role of monocytes and macrophages in killing Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Simultaneously he worked on anti-tuberculous medicines, including streptomycin and isoniazid, before receiving his DPhil in 1953. Shortly after returning to Australia, Mackeness was appointed acting head of the Department of Experimental Pathology at the John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR), where his observations led him to describe "acquired cellular resistance" and that specifically committed T-cells reacting with antigen, activated the macrophages. He had by this time completed a sabbatical to the Rockefeller Institute, and had written extensively on renin and high blood pressure.
In 1962 he was appointed professor in microbiology at the University of Adelaide. Later, he transferred to the Trudeau Institute in the US before moving to the Squibb Institute for Medical Research, where he played an important part in getting the first ACE inhibitor, captopril, licensed.