Jean-François Borel

Jean-François Borel (born July 4, 1933 in Antwerp , Belgium ) is a Belgian microbiologist and immunologist who is considered one of the discoverers of cyclosporine .

Borel studied at the University of Antwerp and the ETH Zurich , where he received his doctorate in immunological genetics in 1964. Then he was at the Swiss Research Institute for Medicine. From 1970 he was in the Sandoz research laboratories in Basel .

In 1972 Borel was involved in the discovery of the immunosuppressive effect of ciclosporin (called Sandimmun by Sandoz), which Sandoz isolated in 1971 from a fungus brought by a Sandoz employee from a vacation in Norway. The screening program at Sandoz was previously developed by K. Saameli (and Stähelin) and the immunological test procedures by S. Lazary. Use as an antibiotic was initially considered. When it was realized that the substance only acted on the T cells and thus had potential in transplant medicine, Borel attracted a great deal of attention at a congress in London in 1976. The new active ingredient was tested in the practice of organ transplants in 1977 by the British surgeon Roy Yorke Calne .

In 1983, Borel became vice president of the pharmaceutical division of Sandoz (later Novartis ). Since 1981 he was professor for immunopharmacology at the University of Bern .

Hartmann Stähelin , the head of the pharmacological department at Sandoz, to which the immunological department belonged, was also involved in the discovery and development , and there was later a dispute about the respective parts of the discovery.

Borel received the Gairdner Foundation International Award in 1986, the InBev-Baillet Latour Health Prize in 1993 , the Cloëtta Prize in 1984 and the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize in 1987 . In 1991 he received an honorary doctorate in Basel.

Web links

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Individual evidence

1. ↑ Novartis has the story of the discovery of cyclosporine cleared up