Manuel Elkin Patarroyo

Manuel Elkin Patarroyo (born November 3, 1946 in Ataco , Tolima , Colombia ) is a Colombian immunologist, best known for developing a synthetic vaccine against malaria in the 1980s. Patarroyo studied medicine at the National University of Colombia, then went with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to the Yale University and was on the 1984 Rockefeller University in Robert Bruce Merrifield and Henry Kunkel doctorate. He then returned to Colombia, where he set up the National Institute of Immunology that was connected to the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Bogotá , a clinic that had existed since 1723 but was closed in 1999 for financial reasons.

In 1987 he developed a synthetic vaccine against malaria (SPf66), which was tested in WHO field tests in Gambia , Tanzania , Thailand and South America. Despite extremely lucrative offers from various pharmaceutical companies, he also transferred the patent for the first version of his vaccine to the WHO free of charge in 1995 and insisted that it be developed and produced in Colombia in order to keep the price low. The WHO did not use the vaccine on a large scale because it found the success rate (formation of enough antibodies in the vaccinated for resistance) to be too low. Initially promising, the later field studies in Africa were disappointing.

Patarroyo, who saw the negative criticism of his first vaccine as partly driven by prejudice against scientists in the developing world , is developing further improved vaccines in Colombia, where malaria is a serious health problem.

In 1994 he received the Robert Koch Prize with Volkmar Braun and the Prince of Asturias Prize .

Web links

• Paul Brown Scientist whose dream of beating disease came true , The Guardian, July 24, 1999

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Patricia Graves, Helen Gelband Vaccines for Preventing Malaria (SPf66) , The Cochrane Collaboration, 2009, pdf ( Memento of the original from July 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.