Sir,

It is my pleasure to announce that my former mentor in tumor immunology has reached 90 years of age. Retired since 2001, he is nevertheless still active. He was a member of the Scientific Board of the Institute until 2018. Currently, he is taking care of the Student Scientific Circle (together about 120 individuals per year) at our Institute. In addition, he is President of the Commission of Natural Sciences and Medicine based in Wrocław—as a branch of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, of which he is a member. He organizes regular seminars by recognized researchers working in high rank institutions abroad, but educated in universities and institutes in our region, popularizing results of biomedical studies among medical doctors, teachers, as well as university and high school students. In 1969, Czesław Radzikowski organized the Laboratory of Tumor Immunology in our Institute, subsequently transformed into the Department of Tumor Immunology after moving the Institute to a new building in 1975. He led this department till his retirement in 2000. He authored 142 publications on tumor immunology, many scientific meeting reports, lectures and seminars. He graduated 18 doctors, 10 of them became associate professors, and 7 achieved a position of full professor either in our Institute (four individuals leading their groups here), elsewhere in Wrocław (one, at the University of Wrocław), or abroad (one in Norway and one in Canada). Professor Radzikowski introduced to Poland modern methods of screening new potential anti-cancer drugs on laboratory animals. In collaboration with the Polytechnic University in Gdańsk, he introduced a new and original Polish anti-cancer drug Ledakrin. He has been a member of scientific boards of multiple institutes and of editorial boards of scientific journals (including Archivum Immunologiae et Therapiae Experimentalis, 1978–2005). He was a founding member of the Polish Immunological Society and co-organizer of its first congress in 1975, in the freshly opened building of our Institute at Rudolfa Weigla 12. Therefore, in 2014 he was honoured with the medal of the Polish Society of Experimental and Clinical Immunology. I wish him many more years of his fruitful activity.

Sincerely yours,

Piotr Kuśnierczyk

AITE Editors join the Author in conveying best birthday wishes to Professor Radzikowski.

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