May 2009 Supplement

Vaccines have been around a long time — longer than any other biologic medical products. Since the 1700s, when a British doctor inoculated people against smallpox using Variolae vaccinae (cowpox virus), we’ve referred to such immunizing treatments as “vaccines.” Most children in developed countries grow up knowing there will be occasional “vaccinations,” usually injections, required to get into school and stay there (which may or may not seem like a great thing, depending on who you talk to). Similarly, people from developed nations traveling to underdeveloped ones expect to undergo certain vaccinations to prevent diseases that they would most likely not be exposed to at home. In the 21st century, vaccines are a routine part of our lives. All the earliest vaccines were made using animal cell culture — some in petri dishes, some in diseased animals or humans — which produced large numbers of wild-type viruses or bacteria that could be weakened, killed, or sometimes used live as vaccines. Bacterial or tox...

In early April, I chatted with the chair of ESACT, Florian Wurm, a professor of biotechnology in the faculty of life sciences of école Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. As chairman of ESACT, what are your duties? How is the chairperson selected, and how long does he or she serve? How long have you been chair? The ESACT chair is elected from among the members of the executive committee, which are elected by the membership. The executive committee organizes board meetings twice a year. A good deal of our time goes into making plans for the next ESACT meeting, in collaboration with the planning committee made up of volunteers from among the members. ESACT meetings are held every other year and are the highlights of our organizational activities. ESACT membership is relatively small, but our conferences are large; we have between 800 and 900 people in attendance at a typical meeting. It is a huge task for volunteers to put together such a meeting as this. Ours is really the only meeting of i...