Rachel Schneerson

Rachel Schneerson, around 1996

Rachel Schneerson (born April 25, 1932 in Warsaw ) is an Israeli bacteriologist , immunologist and physician .

Schneerson studied medicine at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Haddasah Medical School) with the degree in 1958 and completed the doctor's internship in Tel Aviv (Tel-Hashomer Government Hospital) and the specialist training in pediatrics in Hadera (Hillel-Jaffe Government Hospital) and Tel Aviv (Tel-Hashomer), where she was subsequently a pediatrician (licensed specialist in 1966). In 1969 she went to the Pediatrics Department and Laboratory of Immunology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York as an instructor . It was there that she began working closely with John B. Robbins to develop vaccines against bacterial infections in children. In 1970 both went to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD, now Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) of the National Institutes of Health, and in 1974 both went to the Bacterial Products Division of the US Food and Drug Administration. In 1983 they returned to NICHD as head of the Laboratory for Developmental and Molecular Immunity. In 1998 they jointly became head of the Department of Pathogenesis of Bacterial Infections and Immunity. In 2012 both retired.

With Robbins she developed a vaccine against meningitis type B ( Haemophilus influenzae b infection , Hib, in addition to meningitis it can also cause epiglottitis and other inflammations). The infection particularly affected young children, was potentially fatal and caused severe brain damage. Thanks to their vaccine, the infection was almost completely eradicated in the USA. While there were 20,000 cases in the US before their vaccine was launched in 1980, there were only 341 reported cases in the US from 1996 to 2000, but the infection is still widespread elsewhere.

Schneerson and Robbins also developed vaccines for children against whooping cough , staphylococci (including Staphylococcus aureus) and typhoid, among other things .

Initially, they developed a polysaccharide vaccine (the polysaccharides formed the shell of the bacterium), but it did not work in children under 18 months (approved in the USA in 1987). Thanks to a protein that coupled to the polysaccharides ( conjugated vaccine ), they were able to extend the effect to children under 18 months (approval 1990).

In 1996 she received the Lasker ~ DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award , in 2017 the Prinz Mahidol Prize .

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