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Officers and Board Members 2008-2009

Submitted by admin on Fri, 01/24/2020 - 14:02
President

Ray Spier (1938-2018)

Description

Dr. Ray Spier has been a leader in vaccines and the founder of ISV.

Having been educated at Christ Church, Oxford and University College, London in Biochemistry (First Class Honours), Chemical Microbiology and Biochemical Engineering he then spent 7 years as a Senior Process Engineer in industry. The last 3 years in America were spent with Merck Sharpe and Dohme where he was introduced to animal cell biotechnology and the production of viruses for use in veterinary and human vaccines. On returning to the UK he worked for 10 years at the Animal Virus Research Institute, Pirbright, scaling-up bioreactors for virus vaccine production processes and maximizing the biological productivity of the BHK cell lines for Foot-and-Mouth Disease virus generation. He then moved to the University of Surrey as Professor and was Head of Microbiology (7 years) and was then (1997) appointed to the first chair in the UK in ‘Science and Engineering Ethics’. His publication record includes over 200 research papers and reviews along with over 20 edited books and an encyclopedia on animal and plant cell culture technology. In 2002 his book, ‘Ethics Tools and the Engineer’, was published by CRC Press. He is currently the Vaccine Series Editor in Chief, and Editor in Chief of Vaccine Research Quarterly, Procedia in Vaccinology, Trials in Vaccinology and ‘Science and Engineering Ethics’. Having founded the European Society for Animal Cell Technology in 1975 and the International Society for Vaccines in 1996 (President: 2007-11), he was elected to be President of the European Association for Higher Education in Biotechnology in 2000.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United Kingdom
Portraits
Treasurer

Shan Lu

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States
Portraits
Secretary

Adolfo Garcia-Sastre

Adolfo Garcia-Sastre
Description

Dr. Adolfo Garcia-Sastre is a Professor of Medicine and Microbiology and co-director of the Global Health & Emerging Pathogens Institute at The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Dr. García-Sastre earned his Ph.D at the University of Salamanca. He is the Director of the Global Health & Emerging Pathogens Institute. He is also Principal Investigator for the Center for Research on Influenza Pathogenesis (CRIP), one of five NIAID Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance (CEIRS). He served as the President for the International Society for Vaccines from 2013-2015, which is termed ended at the recent 9th Annual Vaccine and ISV Congress in Seoul. For the past 20 years, his research interest has been focused on the molecular biology of influenza viruses and several other negative strand RNA viruses. During his postdoctoral training in the early 1990s, he developed for the first time, novel strategies for expression of foreign antigens by a negative strand RNA virus, influenza virus. He has made major contributions to the influenza virus field, including 1) the development of reverse genetics techniques allowing the generation of recombinant influenza viruses from plasmid DNA (studies in collaboration with Dr. Palese); 2) the generation and evaluation of influenza virus vectors as potential vaccine candidates against different infectious diseases, including malaria and AIDS; 3) the identification of the biological role of the non structural protein NS1 of influenza virus during infection: the inhibition of the type I interferon (IFN) system; and 4) the reconstruction and characterization of the extinct pandemic influenza virus of 1918. His studies provided the first description and molecular analysis of a viral-encoded IFN antagonist among negative strand RNA viruses. These studies led to the generation of attenuated influenza viruses containing defined mutations in their IFN antagonist protein that might prove to be optimal live vaccines against influenza. His research has resulted in more than 100 scientific publications and reviews. He was among the first members of the Vaccine Study Section of the NIH.
In addition, he is an editor for Journal of Experimental Medicine and PLoS Pathogens and a member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Virology, Virology, Journal of General Virology and Virus Research.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States
Board Members

Adolfo Garcia-Sastre

Adolfo Garcia-Sastre
Description

Dr. Adolfo Garcia-Sastre is a Professor of Medicine and Microbiology and co-director of the Global Health & Emerging Pathogens Institute at The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Dr. García-Sastre earned his Ph.D at the University of Salamanca. He is the Director of the Global Health & Emerging Pathogens Institute. He is also Principal Investigator for the Center for Research on Influenza Pathogenesis (CRIP), one of five NIAID Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance (CEIRS). He served as the President for the International Society for Vaccines from 2013-2015, which is termed ended at the recent 9th Annual Vaccine and ISV Congress in Seoul. For the past 20 years, his research interest has been focused on the molecular biology of influenza viruses and several other negative strand RNA viruses. During his postdoctoral training in the early 1990s, he developed for the first time, novel strategies for expression of foreign antigens by a negative strand RNA virus, influenza virus. He has made major contributions to the influenza virus field, including 1) the development of reverse genetics techniques allowing the generation of recombinant influenza viruses from plasmid DNA (studies in collaboration with Dr. Palese); 2) the generation and evaluation of influenza virus vectors as potential vaccine candidates against different infectious diseases, including malaria and AIDS; 3) the identification of the biological role of the non structural protein NS1 of influenza virus during infection: the inhibition of the type I interferon (IFN) system; and 4) the reconstruction and characterization of the extinct pandemic influenza virus of 1918. His studies provided the first description and molecular analysis of a viral-encoded IFN antagonist among negative strand RNA viruses. These studies led to the generation of attenuated influenza viruses containing defined mutations in their IFN antagonist protein that might prove to be optimal live vaccines against influenza. His research has resulted in more than 100 scientific publications and reviews. He was among the first members of the Vaccine Study Section of the NIH.
In addition, he is an editor for Journal of Experimental Medicine and PLoS Pathogens and a member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Virology, Virology, Journal of General Virology and Virus Research.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States

Shan Lu

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States
Portraits

Peter Nara

Peter Nara
Description

Dr. Peter Nara is currently Chief Executive Officer, President, Chairman & co- founder of Biological Mimetics, Inc., a biotechnology company founded to translate the theory of “Deceptive Imprinting” and the “Immune Refocusing” Technology, for preventative vaccines, novel immunotherapeutics and diagnostics in both human and veterinary medicine. Previously, Dr. Nara was the Section Chief of the Vaccine Resistant Diseases Section, Division of Basic Sciences, Office of the Director at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States

John Oxford

Title
Scientific Director of Retroscreen Virology Ltd., and Professor of Virology at St Bartholomew’s and the Royal London Hospital, Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry.
Description

The world renowned influenza virologist Professor John Oxford is Scientific Director of Retroscreen Virology Ltd., and Professor of Virology at St Bartholomew’s and the Royal London Hospital, Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry. British-born, his research interest is the pathogenicity of influenza, in particular the 1918 Spanish Influenza strain. This research has been featured on science television programmes in the UK, USA, Germany and The Netherlands. Professor Oxford was fortunate in his early career to work under Sir Charles Stuart-Harris, who in 1933 had isolated the influenza virus and who was a great inspiration to the young John Oxford. Professor Oxford then moved to Canberra to work under Professor Graeme Laver, whose work with the crystallization of the influenza protein formed the basis for the development of the Tamiflu vaccine.

Co-author of two standard texts: “Influenza, the Viruses and the Disease” with Sir Charles Stuart-Harris and G.C. Schild, and most recently “Human Virology: A Text for Students of Medicine, Dentistry and Microbiology,” now in its third edition, Professor Oxford is a prolific communicator. He also makes time to give numerous interviews on BBC Radio and Television, and is a frequent contributor to the BBC News website. Professor Oxford has published 250 scientific papers.

He is especially proud of Retroscreen Virology, which he established in 1989 with the help of EU funding. Retroscreen Virology has grown into Europe’s leading contract virology research company. Its work is dedicated to creating the next generation of antivirals and vaccines in the field of biomedical research. It is the only company in the UK able to conduct human influenza challenge studies in a specialised quarantine unit with A/Panama/2007/99 and A/New Caledonia/20/99 viruses and has characterised influenza A (H1N1 and H3N2) and B viruses. Recently the company cultivated the SARS virus in its containment laboratory and has investigated virucides and lozenges for major pharmaceutical companies.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United Kingdom
Portraits

Clarisa B. Palatnik de Sousa

Title
Professor of Microbiology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Description

Professor Palatnik de Sousa is a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (1980), Master of Science (Microbiology) from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (1983) and PhD in Microbiology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (1989). She is currently a full professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

She has a large experience in the field of Parasitology, with emphasis in Vaccinology, acting mainly in the following subjects: adjuvants, saponins, vaccine, canine vaccine and visceral leishmaniasis. She is a permanent member of the Postgraduate Program in Microbiology of the Paulo de Góes Institute of UFRJ (since 1991), the Plant Biotechnology and Bioprocesses program, Health and Industry, of the CCS, UFRJ, from 2014 and a visitant member of the Health Science program of the Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil. She was the only Latin American member of the Executive Board of the International Society for Vaccines supported by the Vaccine-Elsevier Journal and the One-Health Scientific Committee of the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA). She was Editor in Chief of Procedia in Vaccinology of Elsevier and obtained the title of Fellow of the International Society for Vaccines, in recognition of her contribution in the field of vaccinology and contribution to the society.

She has developed several diagnostic tests for human and canine visceral leishmaniasis and described the possible transmission of the disease by blood transfusion. In addition, she studied the impact of the epidemiological control of the visceral leishmaniasis in Brazil. She developed the first 2nd generation vaccine licensed against canine visceral leishmaniasis (FML-saponin-Leishmune® (Pfizer-Zoetis) and a DNA vaccine based on the nucleoside hydrolase NH36, which is the main component of the FML antigen. She is currently engaged in the development of a synthetic epitope or chimeric vaccine based on the NH36 domains and epitopes in the murine model. Likewise, it leads the group investigating which NH36 epitopes, chimeras and domains are recognized by PBMCs from human patients of visceral or cutaneous leishmaniasis. She is interested in the molecular aspects of the interaction of the epitopes of NH36 and the receptors of the major histocompatibility complexes.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
Brazil
Portraits

John Shiver

Description

John Shiver is senior vice president of global vaccine R&D at Sanofi Pasteur. He has more than 26 years of vaccine and pharmaceutical R&D experience in industry and government labs. Prior to joining Sanofi Pasteur, he led vaccine research at Merck and served in the experimental immunology branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Throughout his career, Dr. Shiver has led teams of scientists to develop novel vaccine and monoclonal antibody candidates against a broad range of diseases, which has contributed to the licensure of several new vaccines against HPV, rotavirus, zoster, dengue, as well as the combined measles, mumps, rubella and varicella pediatric vaccine.

Dr. Shiver is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the International Society for Vaccines, and a member of the NIH HIV-1 Vaccine Testing Network Laboratory Science Advisory Committee and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania College of Medicine and a member of the editorial board of Nature Partner Journals (npj) Vaccines.

He holds a B.S. in chemistry/mathematics from Wofford College and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Florida.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States

Ray Spier (1938-2018)

Description

Dr. Ray Spier has been a leader in vaccines and the founder of ISV.

Having been educated at Christ Church, Oxford and University College, London in Biochemistry (First Class Honours), Chemical Microbiology and Biochemical Engineering he then spent 7 years as a Senior Process Engineer in industry. The last 3 years in America were spent with Merck Sharpe and Dohme where he was introduced to animal cell biotechnology and the production of viruses for use in veterinary and human vaccines. On returning to the UK he worked for 10 years at the Animal Virus Research Institute, Pirbright, scaling-up bioreactors for virus vaccine production processes and maximizing the biological productivity of the BHK cell lines for Foot-and-Mouth Disease virus generation. He then moved to the University of Surrey as Professor and was Head of Microbiology (7 years) and was then (1997) appointed to the first chair in the UK in ‘Science and Engineering Ethics’. His publication record includes over 200 research papers and reviews along with over 20 edited books and an encyclopedia on animal and plant cell culture technology. In 2002 his book, ‘Ethics Tools and the Engineer’, was published by CRC Press. He is currently the Vaccine Series Editor in Chief, and Editor in Chief of Vaccine Research Quarterly, Procedia in Vaccinology, Trials in Vaccinology and ‘Science and Engineering Ethics’. Having founded the European Society for Animal Cell Technology in 1975 and the International Society for Vaccines in 1996 (President: 2007-11), he was elected to be President of the European Association for Higher Education in Biotechnology in 2000.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United Kingdom
Portraits