She was a researcher at CONICET for more than four decades, a pioneer in national science, key figure in research in experimental cancer and immunology and the first woman to become a titular member of the National Academy of Medicine of Buenos Aires. She deserves be renowned as a remarkable human been on International Women and Girl Day in Science
Dosne de Pasqualini was born in Paris, France, on February 9, 1920, and when she was established in Buenos Aires, she obtained Argentine nationality. At the age of 22, she graduated as a PHD in Experimental Medicine at the University of McGill, in Montreal (Canada), under the direction of the Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist Hans Selye. The same year of her graduation (1942) obtained a scholarship of the Canadian Federation of University Women to work in Buenos Aires, at the Institute of Physiology on the Faculty of Medicine of the National University of Buenos Aires, under the direction of Bernardo Houssay, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1947.
There, Dosne de Pasqualini shared the laboratory with Luis Federico Leloir (Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1970), Alfredo Lanari and Rodolfo Pasqualini, among many other relevant scientists. After marrying Pasqualini, she definitely settled in Argentina where she formed a family.
The outstanding researcher devoted much of her career to the study of the mechanisms that transform a normal cell into cancer. She was a pioneer in the study of the immune system role in cancer and developed a vast research in the field of experimental medicine in leukemia. She produced more than 600 scientific works, many of which were published in the most prestigious scientific journals of her time, and trained dozens of researchers.
First woman designated head of the National Academy of Medicine #
In 1957, Dosne de Pasqualini entered the National Academy of Medicine of Buenos Aires (ANM) and began to be interested in the causes of cancer. In 1962, she was accepted as a member of CONICET. Four years later, in 1966, she was promoted as the director of the Experimental Leukemia section of the National Academy of Medicine. From that place, and for the next 50 years, she carried out a tireless and fruitful work of research on cancer, not only directing an innumerable number of fellows and researchers but also as a member of the editorial committee of the magazine Medicina (Buenos Aires ) and as president of different scientific societies.
She was also, in 1973, the first woman to preside over the Argentine Society of Immunology and founded the Institute of Experimental Leukemia, precursor of the current Institute of Experimental Medicine (IMEX), which today depends on CONICET and the ANM.
In 1991, Dosne de Pasqualini was the first woman to be incorporated as a titular member of the ANM, prestigious institution founded in 1822 and a governing entity in medicine whose history begins along with the university education of medicine in the country. In that event, the then president of the National Academy of Medicine, Enrique P. Viacava, said that *Dosne de Pasqualini stood out “for the formation of 42 researchers, some of which today occupy the highest responsibilities in national and international institutes. His work is stamped in 621 works, 373 in the form of presentations and congresses, of which 128 were published in national and 120 magazines in international.”
Raúl A. Ruggiero, Dosne’s disciple and researcher at CONICET at the Institute of Experimental Medicine (IMEX, CONICET-NATIONAL ACADEMY OF MEDICINE) remembers her with the following words in a column written in his memory: “For everything we receive of her, all who were her direct disciples, and our generation was the last to be, we can say without a doubt - adapting a dedication of Carl Sagan to his wife - that, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is our greatest joy to have shared a planet and a time (golden and already distant) with Christiane.”
She worked uninterruptedly until she was 95 yeras old. When she was asked: “What encourages you to continue, day by day, your scientific task?”, Dosne replied: “I do not imagine my existence without the laboratory. It is a way of life, an eagerness to understand more and more, to appreciate every discovery related to my topic, that is to say to try to understand better why a tumor appears and why it can grow in an organism that would have to be able to stop it. In addition, the researchers form a great family, where the fellow learns the language of the investigation with its director, who in turn learned it from theirs, creating a kind of staircase that has its origin in ancient times and that is projected towards the future”.
The outstanding scientist frequently cited a poem by the American Robert Frost who summarizes her position over life: “Two roads bifurcan in a forest, and took the least busy, and that has made all the difference.”
Dosne de Pasqualini was multipleized by various scientific entities and designated outstanding personality of the City of Buenos Aires. Throughout his life, she beat barriers and demolished stereotypes that served to open roads to new generations. She died on December 23, 2022 at 102.