Maurice R. Hilleman
Maurice Ralph Hilleman (born August 30, 1919 in Miles City , Montana , † April 11, 2005 in Philadelphia ) was an American medical doctor, microbiologist and vaccine expert, who is known for the development of some important vaccines (around 40 in total, both for Humans and animals), including measles , mumps , chickenpox , rubella , hepatitis A and B , pneumonia , meningitis .
life and work
Hilleman grew up on a farm. He was the eighth child of his parents, his twin sister died shortly after his birth and his mother two days later, whereupon he grew up with his uncle. At the age of eight he nearly died of diphtheria . In a 1999 interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer , he attributed his later successes with vaccines to his experiences with chickens on the farm. (Many vaccines are developed in hen's eggs.) His interest in the study of biology arose after reading the origin of species by Charles Darwin , which he found in his local library despite fundamentalist religious tendencies then widespread in his homeland, and a radio station in Bismarck ( North Dakota) broadcasting a science program from Chicago. Hilleman almost had to quit college due to lack of money. He studied on a scholarship at Montana State University (Bachelor in Chemistry and Microbiology as the first of his year) and went on a scholarship to the University of Chicago , where he received his doctorate in 1944 on chlamydia in microbiology. He showed that these were not viruses, but an unusual form of bacteria that only multiply in their host cells.
He then went to ER Squibb and Sons, later the pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb , and in 1944 developed a serum against Japanese B encephalitis, which attacked many US soldiers in the South Pacific during World War II.
From 1948 to 1958 he was the head of the respiratory disease department at the Army Medical Center (later Walter Reed Army Institute of Research) in Washington, DC for the timely development of a vaccine against a flu outbreak in Hong Kong in 1957, which had the potential to become a pandemic who died despite the vaccine, 69,000 Americans, he received the Distinguished Service Medal of the US Army. He and colleagues worked almost around the clock for a few weeks on developing the vaccine. In the end, they were able to provide 40 million vaccine doses. While studying the flu virus, he also discovered a genetic mutation pattern in flu viruses known as shift and drift , which also became important for vaccine development.
From 1957 he was at the pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme (MSD) as head of virus and cell biology research in West Point (Pennsylvania) . There he retired in 1984 as Senior Vice President of Merck Research Labs and then headed the newly founded Merck Institute for Vaccinology until his death. He was also Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine from 1984 . He died of cancer.
Hilleman has traveled around the world as an advisor to WHO on vaccination issues, on the AIDS Research Assessment Committee of the National Institutes of Health, and as a national vaccination advisor in the United States (the National Immunization Program).
In 1983 he received the Howard Taylor Ricketts Award , in 1989 the Robert Koch Medal , and in 1988 the National Medal of Science . He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (since 1985) and its Institute of Medicine, was a member of the American Philosophical Society (since 1997) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 1977).
He was married twice (his first wife died in 1963), his second marriage since 1963 to the former nurse Lorraine Hilleman and had two daughters.
Development of vaccines in MSD
At MSD, Hilleman developed or led the development of numerous vaccines. He developed a mumps vaccine from the viruses of the disease (1963) of his daughter Jeryl Lynn (after whom he named the weakened virus strain used). He was licensed in 1967. The Jeryl-Lynn strain is still used today in the MMR vaccine against measles, rubella, mumps, also developed by Hilleman (licensed in 1971). Hilleman was the first to develop combined vaccines against multiple diseases.
He developed a hepatitis B vaccine that was launched in 1981. It was based on a surface antigen of the virus, the Australia Antigen, now known as HBsAg . The vaccine was successful, but - for fear of HIV contamination - it was replaced in 1986 by a vaccine based not on human serum but entirely on recombinant genetic engineering (in wheat cells), the first such vaccine (Recombivax, also under Hilleman's direction at MSD developed).
In 1974 he developed a vaccine against meningococci . This was the first vaccine that was not based on killed or weakened viruses, but on a surface antigen (a polysaccharide) of bacteria.
He pointed early attention to the potential contamination of vaccines with other viruses, for example, with SV-40 (a tumor virus ), which in the original also later polio vaccine by Jonas Salk came true (but not the oral vaccine of Albert Sabin was true). For himself this created problems with the adenovirus vaccine against the adenovirus type 4 and 7 (cause of colds), which he had developed for the US military, but had to withdraw in 1963 because of infection with SV-40 viruses.
The measles vaccine he developed (licensed in 1963) alone saved an estimated million lives annually. The vaccine was a further development of the vaccine by Edmond Katz, Milo Milanovic and John Franklin Enders .
In 1995 he developed a hepatitis A vaccine and, with Varivax, the first chickenpox vaccine . After a rubella pandemic in the 1960s that was particularly devastating to unborn children, he developed a rubella vaccine (Meruvax) licensed in 1969 .
He was the first to develop a commercial vaccine against a tumor virus, Marek's disease in chickens, which causes lymphomas that wreak havoc in chicken farming. In 1976 at MSD he developed a vaccine against swine flu.
He also played a role in the discovery of the adenovirus (which causes colds), SV-40, and the hepatitis viruses A and B.
He ran his laboratory at MSD, which developed eight of the fourteen routine vaccines for children in the United States, hard-fisted like a military unit, and his tone was harsh, but he was humble himself and did not name any of his vaccines after himself.
MSD named their vaccine facility in Durham , North Carolina after him in 2008 . In 2015 an asteroid was named after him: (28078) Mauricehilleman .
literature
- Paul A. Offit Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases , Smithsonian Press, Washington DC 2007
Web links
- Obituary in the Los Angeles Times by Thomas H. Maugh, April 13, 2005
- History of Vaccines, with information on many of Hilleman's vaccines
Individual evidence
- ^ Obituary in The Economist, April 21, 2005 . His Lutheran pastor also tried to dissuade him. Perry J. Greenbaum, Maurice Hilleman: Mister Vaccine , 2011
- ↑ In 1968, his development of another vaccine against a flu that also broke out in Hong Kong prevented another pandemic
- ↑ Susan and Stanley Plotkin A short history of vaccination in Stanley Plotkin, Walter Orenstein, Paul Offit (Eds.) Vaccines , Elsevier, Saunders 2008
- ^ Obituary in the Washington Post
- ↑ 2005. According to the Los Angeles Times obituary
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hilleman, Maurice R. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hilleman, Maurice Ralph (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American medic |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 30, 1919 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Miles City , Montana |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 11, 2005 |
| Place of death | Philadelphia |