Vaccine Science Portfolio Advisory Council (VSPAC)
MVI makes routine use of external experts to move its research and development (R&D) strategy forward. As part of a carefully developed portfolio review process, MVI has established a Vaccine Science Portfolio Advisory Council (VSPAC), which is comprised of eminent malaria scientists and vaccinologists who meet at least once a year to provide strategic input and advice on MVI’s portfolio and overall R&D program.
Members
Norman Baylor, PhD
Dr. Norman W. Baylor is currently the President and CEO of Biologics Consulting Group, Inc. He was formerly the Director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review (OVRR) in the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Prior to his position as Director, Dr. Baylor served as Deputy Director of OVRR and Associate Director for Regulatory Policy. He has evaluated and facilitated the development and licensure of numerous new vaccines, such as acellular pertussis, varicella, pneumococcal conjugate, human papillomavirus (HPV), influenza, Zoster, and all of the new-generation combination vaccines during his 20 year career at the FDA.
Dr. Baylor received his BS degree in medical microbiology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his MS and PhD degrees in microbial genetics and molecular microbiology, respectively, from the University of Kentucky. Dr. Baylor spent three years as a postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and three years with Program Resources Incorporated as a Senior Research Scientist at the US National Cancer Institute-Frederick Cancer Research Facility. Dr. Baylor served as the FDA’s liaison to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the US Department of Health and Human Services National Vaccine Advisory Committee, and the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines. Dr. Baylor continues to serve as an expert advisor to the World Health Organization on several global vaccine initiatives, including assessing national regulatory authorities worldwide.
Fred Binka, MBChB, PhD
Professor Fred Binka is Project Manager for the INDEPTH Network Malaria Clinical Trials Alliance. Before assuming this position, he was Executive Secretary of the INDEPTH Network. Professor Binka became an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of Ghana in 2001. His previous positions include Public Health Specialist at the Ministry of Health, Medical Officer at the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, Director of the Navrongo Health Research Centre in the Ministry of Health, and epidemiologist and head of fieldwork at the Ghana Vitamin A Supplementation Trials. Professor Binka served as a member of the National Malaria Advisory Committee from 1996 to 1998. From 1994 to 1999, he was an Honorary Research Fellow in epidemiology and population sciences at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
He has served on various key committees of the World Health Organization (WHO), including the following: member, Tropical Disease Research Task Force on the Integrated Management of the Sick Child, Malaria; member, Tropical Disease Research Task Force on Research Capability Strengthening; Chair, Tropical Disease Research Task Force on Malaria and Health Sector Reform; Chair, Multilateral Initiative on Malaria and WHO/TDR (Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases) Task Force on Capacity-Strengthening in Africa; and member, WHO/TDR Steering Committee on Proof of Principle and Steering Committee on Implementation Research. Professor Binka has also served on several committees of other international nongovernmental organizations.
He was the first recipient of the Rudolf Geigy Award. The 2001 award from the R. Geigy Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, was extended for excellence in science and for dedication and outstanding contributions to malaria control and health development in Africa. He received his medical degree, an MBChB, with a credit in community health, from the University of Ghana, Legon, and an MPH with distinction from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He later received his PhD in epidemiology, summa cum laude, from the University of Basel in Switzerland.John Boslego, MD
Dr. Boslego directs PATH’s vaccine development program, which seeks to identify and facilitate the development of safe, effective, affordable vaccines against select major disease threats in the developing world. Dr. Boslego’s career spans 30 years of service to private industry and the US government. Before joining PATH, he served as Executive Director of Biologics, Clinical Research, at Merck & Co., Inc. His portfolio at Merck included clinical development of a Haemophilus influenzae type b conjugate vaccine, a recombinant hepatitis B vaccine, an influenza DNA vaccine, a pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine, a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, various pediatric combination vaccines, a rotavirus vaccine, and a human papillomavirus vaccine.
For nearly two decades, Dr. Boslego worked for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in vaccine research—both in the laboratory and in clinical trials. He also directed the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences in Thailand for three years.
Dr. Boslego received his medical education at George Washington University after graduating from the United States Military Academy.
Brendan Crabb, PhD (Chair)
Professor Brendan Crabb is a research scientist and Director and CEO of the Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health (Burnet Institute). The Burnet Institute is Australia’s largest independent global health research organization and is committed to achieving better health for poor and vulnerable communities via a combination of medical research, education, and public health. His personal expertise is in infectious diseases, and the primary driver for his group’s current research is the development of a malaria vaccine and the identification of new targets for therapeutic intervention.
Professor Crabb holds professorial appointments at The University of Melbourne and La Trobe and Monash Universities, and until his appointment at the Burnet Institute, was a Senior Principal Research Fellow of the National Health & Medical Research Council of Australia and an International Research Fellow of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the United States.
Professor Crabb has a strong interest in education. He was formerly a lecturer at The University of Melbourne at the secondary, tertiary, and postgraduate levels. Until recently, Professor Crabb was the Editor-in-Chief (2006–2009) of the world’s leading parasitology research journal, the International Journal for Parasitology. He is the Chair of the upcoming Gordon Conference on Malaria, Italy, 2013.
Kamini Mendis, MD, PhD, DSc
Dr. Kamini Mendis is an independent consultant on malaria and tropical medicine, having held the post of Coordinator of Malaria Treatment and Malaria Elimination in the World Health Organization (WHO) until October 2010. She began her career as a clinician and moved to research on immunology and vaccine development in malaria, and then to a wide range of fields in the areas of immunology, epidemiology, clinical studies, pathogenesis, and disease control in malaria. In 1980, she founded the Malaria Research Centre at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, and a postgraduate training programme in research, supervising PhD and MSc students and building a network of young scientists in Sri Lanka. She continued academic pursuits in Sri Lanka as the Professor of Parasitology until 1997, when she left for Geneva. She has made several original contributions to scientific knowledge on malaria. Her work on malaria research has been honored by national and international awards, including the National Presidential Award (1983), the Chalmers Medal of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (1991), and the Ashford Bailey Medal of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (1993). She serves on international scientific and review boards and committees on malaria and on international health, has chaired several such international committees, and delivered keynote addresses at international events in tropical medicine, including the Gorgas Memorial Oration, United States, in 2000.
She helped establish the Global Forum for Health Research in Geneva in 1997, and then served in the Transition Secretariat of the then Director-General-elect of WHO. She was instrumental in the planning and launch of the Roll Back Malaria Initiative in 1998 and then headed the component on treatment and elimination of malaria of the WHO Global Malaria Programme, where she was engaged in global efforts to reduce the burden of malaria. She is currently engaged in malaria control efforts in the Southeast Asian region, and also serves as a malaria adviser to international funding agencies and as a member of several international expert committees on malaria. Her current interests and pursuits involve supporting regional and international efforts to strengthen the evidence-to-policy pathway for malaria by bridging the research and control gaps in the field, and to promote epidemiology-based malaria control to enhance the movement of countries from control to elimination of malaria; addressing more broadly health issues within the context of poverty; and helping build critical human resource capacities for evidence-based malaria control.
Tom Monath, MD
Dr. Monath is a Partner, Pandemic and Biodefense Fund, at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He is also Chief Technical Officer of PaxVax Inc., Chief Medical Officer of Hookipa BioTech AG, a Director of Rapid Micro Biosystems Inc., and Adjunct Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. Between 1992 and 2006, Dr. Monath was Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Director at Acambis (a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company), where he directed research and development on dengue, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis (using yellow fever as a live vector), yellow fever, and Clostridium difficile vaccines, as well as smallpox vaccine for defense against bioterrorism. Dr. Monath received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College and MD from Harvard Medical School and trained in internal medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Boston. Col. Monath retired from the US Army in 1992 after 24 years in the uniformed services (Army and US Public Health Service). Between 1973 and 1988, he was Director of the Division of Vector-Borne Viral Diseases at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fort Collins, Colorado. From 1989 to 1992, he was Chief of the Virology Division at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
Dr. Monath is on the editorial board of five scientific journals. He has received the Nathanial A. Young Award (1984), the Richard M. Taylor Award (1996), and the Walter Reed Medal (2002) from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and was President of that Society (2004–2005). He has served on numerous government and international committees on infectious diseases and biosecurity, World Health Organization expert committees, and the US National Vaccines Advisory Committee. Dr. Monath has published 385 papers and edited six books on the epidemiology, immunology, and pathogenesis of viruses and on vaccine development.
Rino Rappuoli, PhD
Dr. Rino Rappuoli is Global Head of Vaccines Research at Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics and is based in Siena, Italy. He earned his PhD in biological sciences at the University of Siena and has served as a visiting scientist at Rockefeller University in New York and Harvard Medical School in Boston. Prior to the present position, he was Head of Research and Development at Sclavo and then Head of Vaccine Research and Chief Scientific Officer of Chiron Corporation.
Several molecules on which Dr. Rappuoli worked became, or are near to becoming, licensed vaccines. These include: CRM197, used in H. influenzae, N. meningitides, and pneumococcus vaccines; an acellular vaccine against pertussis containing a genetically detoxified pertussis toxin; the first conjugate vaccine against meningococcus C and later against meningococcus ACYW; MF59, used in a vaccine against pandemic influenza; and a genome-derived vaccine against meningococcus B currently under review by European and Canadian regulatory agencies.
He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the European Molecular Biology Organization. Awards conferred include the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize (1991), the Gold Medal by the Italian President (2005), the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal (2009), the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Institute of Human Virology in Maryland (2010), and the Excellence Award from the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (2011).
Professor David Salisbury, CB, FRCP, FRCPCH, FFPH
Professor David Salisbury is Director of Immunisation at the Department of Health, London, where he is responsible for the national immunization program.
Professor Salisbury graduated from London University in 1969. He trained as a pediatrician at Oxford and at the Hospital for Sick Children, London. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and the Faculty of Public Health. He has an honorary chair in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College, London. Professor Salisbury was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in Her Majesty the Queen’s 2001 Birthday Honours.
In addition to his UK responsibilities, Professor Salisbury works extensively with the World Health Organization (WHO) on the Global Programme for Vaccines. He was the Chair of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Vaccines from 2005 to 2010, is Chair of the European Region Certification Commission for Poliomyelitis Eradication, and is a member of the Eastern Mediterranean Polio Elimination Certification Commission and the South East Asian Polio Elimination Certification Commission. During 2009, Professor Salisbury chaired the WHO H1N1 vaccine working group. He is Co-chair of the Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Group for the Global Health Security Action Group of G7 countries. He is a liaison member of the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the US National Vaccine Advisory Committee. He also chairs the European Vaccine Advisory Group for the European Centre for Disease Control and is Co-chair of the research and development work stream for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Decade of Vaccines initiative. He is a member of the Malaria Advisory Panel for the Gates Foundation and a Science Advisory Council member for the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.
Professor Salisbury has written approximately 90 publications on immunization and pediatric topics.
Rafick-Pierre Sékaly, PhD
Dr. Rafick-Pierre Sékaly has been for the past two years the Co-Director and Chief Scientific Officer of VGTI Florida (the Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute), which focuses on the development of better immune therapies and vaccines to chronic viral diseases and cancer. Dr. Sékaly obtained his PhD in biochemistry at the Université of Lausanne in 1984. He has been involved in the areas of AIDS and AIDS pathogenesis for the past 15 years. Dr. Sékaly’s group has been at the forefront of novel assay development which has allowed the characterization of the qualitative and quantitative features of the immune response at the single-cell level. He is now fully focused on applying systems biology to unravelling defects in different cells (innate and adaptive) of the immune response.
In addition to his scientific work and leadership at VGTI Florida, Dr. Sékaly is the Founder and Scientific Director of the National Laboratory of Immune Monitoring. In 2009, he was one of four winners of the Avant-Garde Award for HIV/AIDS research from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for his work on the HIV reservoir. This award carries a grant of $500,000 per year for five years. Dr. Sékaly has also been awarded, with his colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, a $25 million award for work aimed at identifying novel approaches to eradicate HIV.
Fidel Zavala, MD
Dr. Fidel Zavala is a Professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University. He initiated his research career at New York University School of Medicine in 1980. After a postdoctoral training in 1984, he joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor, and in 1999, he became Professor. In 2003, he joined Johns Hopkins University as Professor and member of the Malaria Research Institute. He has served as a member of the editorial board of Infection and Immunity, Experimental Parasitology, and Journal of Immunological Methods; as Editor of Parasitology International; and recently, as Associate Editor of The Journal of Immunology. He served as a member of the Advisory Board of the European Virtual Institute of Malaria Research, and since 2010, he is a permanent member of the US National Institutes of Health Pathogenic Eukaryotes Study Section.
The main focus of Dr. Zavala’s research is immunology of malaria parasite infections and vaccine immunology. He has published more than 130 scientific articles, on epitope characterization of antibody responses, development of subunit vaccines, and immunobiology of CD8+ T cell responses against malaria parasites.
Kathryn C. Zoon, PhD
Dr. Kathryn C. Zoon is the Director of the Division of Intramural Research (DIR) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, US National Institutes of Health. The DIR conducts basic and clinical research related to infectious diseases, immunology, and allergy, with the ultimate goal of contributing to the development of new and improved therapies, diagnostics, and vaccines to improve human health. She also serves as the DIR’s Chief of the Cytokine Biology Section, which conducts research on the structure and function of human interferon alphas.
Dr. Zoon has more than 35 years of experience in the area of biomedical research and product development, of which almost a decade was spent as the Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the US Food and Drug Administration, an organization responsible for the licensing of hundreds of biological products. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine, Associate Editor of the Journal of Interferon Research, and the Federal Liaison to the Board of the International Association of Biologicals. In addition, she serves on the World Health Organization Expert Committee on Biological Standardization, the US Department of Defense Malaria Vaccine Program Scientific Advisory Board, and the US Agency for International Development Vaccine Development Scientific Consultants Group. She earned her PhD in biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University.
Observer
Vasee Moorthy, MD, PhD
Dr. Vasee Moorthy serves as the malaria vaccine focal point for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. He acts as Secretariat for two WHO malaria vaccine advisory committees—Malaria Vaccine Advisory Committee and Joint Technical Expert Group—which provide recommendations to WHO about malaria vaccine research and development and clinical evaluation. He facilitates the global Malaria Vaccine Funders Group and works to find synergies among funders to accelerate development of malaria vaccines for developing countries. His role includes coordination of development of global norms and standards within malaria vaccine development. He has previously served as Senior Program Officer in clinical vaccinology at the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.
Dr. Moorthy has 15 years of experience covering clinical infectious diseases and tropical medicine, five years based in sub-Saharan Africa conducting malaria vaccine field trials and clinical malaria research. He serves on various data and safety monitoring boards and scientific advisory committees, is an editorial board member of PLoS ONE, reviews articles from academic journals, including The Lancet and The Lancet Infectious Diseases. He holds a BA (first class) in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge, a clinical medicine degree from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in malaria immunology from the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.
