Philip E. Auron, Ph.D., passed away at 72 on Sunday, October 13, 2024, after a five-month battle with esophageal cancer. He was an immunologist and biochemist who sequenced Interleukin-1β (IL-1β).
Since 2002, Dr. Auron was a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Duquesne University. Prior to that, he was a faculty member at Tufts University School of Medicine, MIT, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Pittsburg. Dr. Auron’s more recent research focused on understanding detailed mechanisms of IL-1 and structure-function interactions regulating its activation by different inducers, and how it differed from many other immediate early genes such as TNF, with the aim of designing specific inhibitors that could function as novel anti-inflammatory drugs.
In 1982, Dr. Auron was a member of the group that submitted the original contract application proposal for the GenBank sequence database, which resulted in the establishment of that important repository. His research was also at the heart of Cistron v. Immunex, the landmark litigation that defended the sanctity of confidentiality during the peer review process.
Dr. Auron joined AAI in 1988. He authored 11 papers in The Journal of Immunology and was also first author on the 1984 paper that reported the sequence of the cDNA encoding for the human precursor of IL-1, included in Pillars of Immunology in 2007.
Outside the lab, Dr. Auron Phil was a dedicated photographer and possessed a marvelous singing voice and perfect pitch. He enjoyed riding his bicycle into his later years. He had a great sense of humor which sustained those around him and was still in evidence even in his last few days.
Read Philip E. Auron’s full obituary.
