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Hilary Koprowski

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Hilary Koprowski
Koprowski, Warsaw, 2007
Born (1916-12-05) December 5, 1916 (age 107)
Warsaw
NationalityPolish
Known forpolio vaccine
Scientific career
FieldsVirology

Hilary Koprowski (born December 5, 1916, in Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish virologist and immunologist, and inventor of the world's first effective live polio vaccine.

Life

Koprowski, Warsaw, 2007

Born to a family of Jewish background,[1] Hilary Koprowski grew up in Warsaw where he attended the Liceum Ogólnokształcące and from age twelve took piano lessons at the Warsaw Conservatory. He received his medical degree from the Faculty of Medicine at Warsaw University in 1939. He also received music degrees from the Warsaw Conservatory and, in 1940, from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. He adopted scientific research as his life's work, though he never gave up music and composed several musical works.

In 1939, after the Nazi invasion of Poland Koprowski and his wife Irena, a medical doctor, fled first to Rome, then in 1940 to Paris and finally, via Spain and Portugal, to Brazil, where Koprowski worked in Rio de Janeiro for the Rockefeller Foundation. His field of research for several years was finding a live-virus vaccine against yellow fever.

After World War II the Koprowskis settled in Pearl River, New York, where Koprowski was hired as a researcher for Lederle Laboratories, the pharmaceutical division of American Cyanamid. Here Koprowski began his polio experiments which ultimately led to the discovery of the first oral polio vaccine. On account of his employment in the pharmaceutical industry, some of his academic colleagues called him a "commercial scientist."

In July 1938 Koprowski had married Irena Koprowska. They have two sons, Claude (born 1940 in Paris) and Christopher (born 1951). Claude Koprowski is a retired physician. Christopher Koprowski is a physician certified in two specialties: neurology, and radio-oncology; he is chair of the department of radiation oncology at Christiana Hospital in Delaware.[2]

First polio vaccine

Koprowski created the world's first polio vaccine, based on oral administration of attenuated polio virus. In researching a potential polio vaccine, he had focused on live viruses that were attenuated (rendered non-virulent) rather than on killed viruses (the latter became the basis for the injected vaccine that was subsequently created by Jonas Salk).

Koprowski viewed the live vaccine as more powerful, since it entered the intestinal tract directly and could provide lifelong immunity, whereas the Salk vaccine required booster shots. Also, administering a vaccine by mouth is easy, whereas an injection requires medical facilities and is more expensive. Koprowski's vaccine was taken by the first child on February 27, 1950, and within 10 years was being used on four continents. Albert Sabin's attenuated-live-virus polio vaccine was developed from attenuated polio virus that Sabin had received from Koprowski.

Koprowski is President of Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories, Inc., and Head of the Center for Neurovirology at Thomas Jefferson University. In 2006 he was awarded a record 50th grant from the National Institutes of Health.

He is author or co-author of over 875 scientific papers and is co-editor of several journals. He serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization.

Honors

Koprowski has received many honorary degrees and honors, including the Order of the Lion from the King of Belgium, the French Order of Merit for Research and Invention, a Fulbright Scholarship, and appointment as Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich. In 1989 he received the San Marino Award for Medicine and the Nicolaus Copernicus Medal of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

Koprowski has received many honors in Philadelphia, including the Philadelphia Cancer Research Award, the John Scott Award and, in May 1990, the most prestigious honor of his home city, the Philadelphia Award. He is a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which in 1959 presented him with its Alvarenga Prize.

Koprowski is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America.[3]

He holds foreign membership in the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters.

On March 22, 1995, Koprowski was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland by the President of the Republic of Finland. On March 13, 1997, he received the Legion d'Honneur from the French government. On September 29, 1998, he was presented the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland by the Polish President.

On February 25, 2000, Koprowski was honored with a reception at Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson University celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first administration of his oral polio vaccine. At the reception, he received commendations from the United States Senate, the Pennsylvania Senate and Governor Tom Ridge.

On May 1, 2007 Hilary Koprowski was awarded the Albert Sabin Gold Medal by the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Baltimore.[4]

AIDS hypothesis

British journalist Edward Hooper publicized a hypothesis that AIDS was inadvertently caused in the late 1950s in the Belgian Congo by Koprowski's research into a polio vaccine. The OPV AIDS hypothesis has been widely rejected by the scientific community.[5] The journal Science wrote of Hooper's claims, "...it can be stated with almost complete certainty that the large polio vaccine trial... was not the origin of AIDS."[6] Koprowski also rejected the claim, although he has declined to sue Hooper. In a separate case, he won a clarification[7] and $1 in monetary damages[8] in a defamation action against Rolling Stone, which had published an article making similar allegations.[9] A concurrent defamation lawsuit that Koprowski brought against the Associated Press was settled several years later, but the terms were not publicly disclosed.[8]

Koprowski's original reports from 1960–61 detailing part of his vaccination campaign in the Belgian Congo are available on-line from the World Health Organization.[10][11][12]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ David Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-19-515294-8.
  2. ^ http://www.christianacare.org/body.cfm?id=961
  3. ^ Directory [of] PIASA Members, p. 25.
  4. ^ Award Ceremony and speeches
  5. ^ Worobey M, Santiago ML, Keele BF, Ndjango JB, Joy JB, Labama BL, Dhed'A BD, Rambaut A, Sharp PM, Shaw GM, Hahn BH (2004). "Origin of AIDS: contaminated polio vaccine theory refuted" (PDF). Nature. 428 (6985): 820–820. doi:10.1038/428820a. PMID 15103367.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. ^ "Panel nixes Congo trials as AIDS source". Science. 258 (5083): 738–9. 1992. doi:10.1126/science.258.5083.738-d. PMID 1439779.
  7. ^ [1]"Origin of AIDS" update. Rolling Stone, 9 December 1993, p. 39
  8. ^ a b Brian Martin (2001) "The Politics of a Scientific Meeting: the Origin-of-AIDS Debate at the Royal Socity" in Politics & the Life Sciences, pp. 119-130 online
  9. ^ Hilary Koprowski (1992). "AIDS and the polio vaccine". Science. 257 (5073): 1024, 1026–7. doi:10.1126/science.257.5073.1024. PMID 1509249.
  10. ^ LeBrun A, Cerf J, Gelfand HM, Courtois G, Plotkin SA, Koprowski H (1960) "Vaccination with the CHAT strain of type 1 attenuated poliomyelities virus in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo 1. Description of the city, its history of poliomyelitis, and the plan of the vaccination campaign" Bull World Health Organ. 22:203-13 online
  11. ^ Plotkin SA, LeBrun A, Koprowski H (1960) "Vaccination with the CHAT strain of type 1 attenuated poliomyelitis virus in Leopoldville. Belgian Congo 2. Studies of the safety and efficacy of vaccination", Bull World Health Organ 22:215-34 online
  12. ^ Plotkin SA, LeBrun A, Courtois G, Koprowski H (1961) "Vaccination with the CHAT strain of type 1 attenuated poliomyelitis virus in Leopoldville, Congo 3. Safety and efficacy during the first 21 months of study" Bull World Health Organ 24:785-92 online

References

  • Roger Vaughan, Listen to the Music: The Life of Hilary Koprowski, Berlin, Springer, 2000, ISBN 0-387-98849-1.
  • David Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-19-515294-8.
  • Albert B. Sabin Vaccine Institute, 2007 Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal awarded to Hilary Koprowski, booklet and PDF file, Washington, D.C., 2007 Award Ceremony and speeches
  • Directory [of] PIASA Members, 1999, New York City, Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, 1999.
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