Rino Rappuoli

Rino Rappuoli

Rino Rappuoli (born August 4, 1952 in Radicofani near Siena ) is an Italian doctor who is known for vaccine developments. He is Global Head of Vaccine Research at Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics in Siena.

Life

Rappuoli grew up in Siena and studied biology at the University of Siena and Washington University . After receiving his doctorate in Siena, he went to the Italian vaccine research center Sclavo in Siena in 1978. In 1979 he spent several months at Rockefeller University in the laboratory of Emil Gotschlich , a pioneer in the development of meningococcal vaccines, and in 1980 he spent a year at Harvard Medical School with John Murphy and Alwin Pappenheimer , who were researching new diphtheria vaccines (CRM 197) . The vaccine was based on a targeted mutation of the toxin- coding gene of the diphtheria bacterium (Pappenheimer 1972). In 1981 Rappuoli returned to the Sclavo Research Center and became head of his own laboratory there. There he developed the CRM 197 vaccine for mass production. However, it was not used as a diphtheria vaccine, as the tried and tested old vaccination method used since 1924 was preferred. CRM 197 was used, however, in improved vaccines against influenza, pneumococci and meningococci, where it serves as a carrier protein for the actual vaccine antigen (a polysaccharide ).

Using the same method of targeted mutation of the toxin gene as Pappenheimer used for diphtheria toxin, he developed a vaccine against whooping cough in the 1980s . The vaccine was an example of the new generation of acellular vaccines (which did not contain any cellular components). In the mid-1990s, the vaccine caught on in the US and Europe after it was found to be as effective as traditional vaccines and had the advantage of requiring 10 times fewer molecules. Due to the success of the vaccine, the Sclavo research center was taken over by the Californian biotechnology company Chiron (which later joined Novartis). In the 1990s, Rappuoli and colleagues developed conjugated vaccines against meningococci (of subtypes A and C) based on the CRM 197 carrier protein. Vaccination with the vaccine against type C meningococci began in the UK in 1999 and resulted in the infection being virtually eradicated by 2001.

Also since the 1990s in Siena he has been working intensively on Helicobacter pylori , the cause of gastric ulcers, which, however, did not lead to the development of a vaccine, but to basic research, since Helicobacter provides the new example of a bacterium that enters the host cells with the help of a injected toxin causes cancer.

Rappuoli is also considered one of the founders of reverse vaccine development, based on sequencing the pathogen's genome. He first used this method in search of a vaccine against subtype B meningococci. In 1997 he persuaded Craig Venter , who had already sequenced the genome of the flu virus with his company TIGR, to start sequencing Neisseria meningitidis type B, which was successful up to 2000 and provided over 90 potential surface proteins as starting points for vaccines instead of a dozen or so. Based on this, Rappuoli worked in the 2000s on the development of a vaccine against meningococcal type B.

He has also been developing avian flu vaccines since the late 1990s, showing the benefits of the adjuvant MF 59.

In 1991 Rappuoli received the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize . He became an external member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2005, the Royal Society in 2016 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017 . In 2009 he was awarded the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize , for 2017 he was awarded a Canada Gairdner International Award . For 2019 he receives the Robert Koch Prize .

Fonts

• with Giuseppe Del Giudice (editor) Influenza vaccines of the future , 2nd edition, Springer 2011
• with Cesare Montecucco (editor) Guidebook to protein toxins and their use in cell biology , Oxford University Press 1997
• with Fabio Bagnoli (editor) Vaccine design - innovative approaches and novel strategies , Caister Academic Press 2011
• with Vincenzo Scarlato, Beatrice Arico (editors) Signal transduction and bacterial virulence , Springer 1995

literature

• B. Trivedi: Profile of Rino Rappuoli. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Volume 103, number 29, July 2006, pp. 10831-10833, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.0604892103 , PMID 16832044 , PMC 1544134 (free full text).