Vice-Chancellor's Occasional Lecture

Date: 
Thursday, March 31, 2016 - 14:00 to 16:00
Venue: 
School of Public Health Auditorium
 
The next Vice-Chancellor's Occasional Lecture will take place as follows:
Date:               Thursday, 31st March, 2016
Time:               2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Venue:             School of Public Health Auditorium
 
SPEAKER
Professor Manuel Elkin Patarroyo Murillo
Director, Fundación Instituto de Inmunología de Colombia – FIDIC; Bogotá D.C., Colombia
 
TOPIC
Immune Protection Inducing Synthetic Protein Structures (IMPIPS): The New Vaccines Development
 
Abstract:
Physicochemical rules must be followed for the development of fully-protective, chemically-synthesized vaccines. We have identified most of these principles or rules for the prototype disease (malaria) for developing a panel of functionally-relevant, specifically modified, high activity binding peptides (mHABPs) attaching to host cells, thereby inducing sterile protective immunity in the experimental Aotus monkey model. These principles include a polypropyline II - left handed-like (PPIIL) 26.5 ± 3.5 A° distance between amino acids fitting into Pockets 1 to 9 of Class II molecules’ peptide binding region (PBR), an appropriate charge and volume of residues fitting into these molecules’ Pockets 1, 4, 6 and 9, as well as specific rotamer orientation of residues contacting the T-cell receptor. These principles or rules have led to developing long-lasting, protection-inducing multi-epitope, multistage, minimal subunit-based, chemically-synthesized vaccines or effective immune protection-inducing, synthetic protein structures.
 
 
Profile:
 
Professor Manuel Elkin Patarroyo M. (1946) received his M.D. degree from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in 1971 where he is Full Professor of Molecular Pathology. He conducted post-doctoral studies at the Yale University and at Rockefeller University, U.S.A. with Professor Henry Kunkel, and on Tumor Immunology at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, with Professor George Klein. In 1976, he founded the Instituto de Inmunología at the San Juan de Dios Hospital, devoted to the development of chemically synthesized vaccines, among them the antimalarial vaccine, with the advice of Professors Bruce Merrifield (Rockefeller University), Professor Richard Lerner (Scripps Research Institute) and Professor David Andreu (Pompeu Fabra University). The first chemically synthesized vaccine against this scourging disease was published in 1987 followed by a large series of clinical and field trials in different parts of the world that allowed the conclusion of the feasibility of chemically synthesized vaccines.
 
He has been the invited speaker at more than a thousand international symposia and several national symposia and congresses and author of three hundred and seventy seven (377) articles published in high-impact scientific international journals such as Nature, Lancet, Chemical Reviews, Vaccine, and Accounts of Chemical Research among others, with more than 5,000 citations. His work is targeted towards searching for radical solutions against scourging diseases, especially people inhabiting tropical and subtropical regions of the world. He developed the first chemically synthesized vaccine (SPf66) in 1987, this being the first vaccine against a parasite and the first one to be produced in a third-world country. He donated the SPf66 patent to the World Health Organization in 1995 to ensure a cheap and accessible cure for people in developing countries. He is currently the Director of Fundación Instituto de Inmunologia de Colombia – FIDIC.