Biography:Enzo Paoletti
Enzo Paoletti (May 22, 1943 – January 17, 2018) was an Italian-American virologist who developed the technology to express foreign antigens in vaccinia and other poxviruses. This advance led to the development of vaccines against multiple disease-causing pathogens.
Education
Enzo Paoletti was born in Monti di Villa, Bagni di Lucca, Lucca, Italy on May 22, 1943. He emigrated with his family to New York in 1951. Paoletti received B.A. degree from Canisius College in Buffalo, New York in 1966 and he earned a Ph.D. from State University of New York at Buffalo, Roswell Park Division in 1971. Early in his graduate studies, Paoletti co-authored a paper that described, for the first time, RNA polymerase activity in vaccinia virus[1] - a key finding noted by Dr. David Baltimore in his Nobel Lecture delivered in1975[2]. Paoletti's postdoctoral years were spent in the laboratory of Dr. Bernard Moss at National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Laboratory of Biology of Viruses, Bethesda, Maryland.
Career and research achievements
In 1974, Paoletti joined the Wadsworth Center for Laboratories and Research at the New York State Department of Health in Albany as a Senior Research Scientist. Four seminal papers, all published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences with Dennis Panicali and others provided the technology and proof of principle to construct live vaccines using genetically engineered poxviruses.[3][4][5][6] In 1990 Paoletti's laboratory was the first to sequence the genome of vaccinia virus,[7] an achievement gained without the use of high-throughput DNA sequencers.
In 1981, Paoletti founded and was the Founding Scientist of Virogenetics Corporation, a private, for-profit company based in Troy, New York to commercialize vectored vaccines.[8] Over the years, highly attenuated poxvirus vectors (NYVAC, ALVAC and TROVAC) that induced cell-mediated and humoral responses were developed.[9][10]
Vaccines against several pathogens including avian influenza virus, Newcastle disease virus, cytomegalovirus, canine distemper virus, feline leukemia virus, feline immunodeficiency virus, equine influenza virus, equine herpes virus, Japanese encephalitis virus, human T cell leukemia/lymphoma virus type 1, African horse sickness virus, rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus, herpes simplex virus, hepatitis C virus, bluetongue virus, pseudorabies virus, and diseases such as malaria,[11] HIV, and tuberculosis were developed using engineered poxvirus vectors.[12] While many vaccines are in preclinical or clinical development, six have been licensed for veterinary use.[12]
A prime-dose regimen with canarypox ALVAC-HIV (vCP1521) vaccine and HIV-1 gp120 AIDSVAX B/E was found to be safe, well-tolerated and 31.2% effective for the prevention of HIV acquisition in HIV-uninfected adults in Thailand.[13]
Poxvirus vectors have also been used to develop vaccines against specific cancers.[12]
Awards and academic affiliations
Paoletti received numerous awards including: New York State Regents Scholarship, the National Institutes of Health Predoctoral Traineeship, the New York State Department of Health Predoctoral Fellowship, National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship, Il Leone Di San Marco Award for Science (1984) and Rhone- Poulenc Prix Innovation (1991).
He was affiliated with several scientific societies namely: American Society for Microbiology, American Society for Virology, American Association for the Advancement of Science, New York State Academy of Science, American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and the International Association of Biological Standardization.
Paoletti also served as on the editorial board of several journals including Journal of Virology, and Virology. He held adjunct professorships at SUNY-Albany, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Albany Medical College of Union University.
References
- ↑ Munyon, W.; Paoletti, E.; Grace, J. T. (1967-12-01). "RNA polymerase activity in purified infectious vaccinia virus" (in en). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 58 (6): 2280–2287. doi:10.1073/pnas.58.6.2280. ISSN 0027-8424. PMID 5242206. PMC 223832. http://www.pnas.org/content/58/6/2280.
- ↑ "David Baltimore - Nobel Lecture: Viruses, Polymerases and Cancer". https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1975/baltimore-lecture.html.
- ↑ "Molecular genetics of vaccinia virus: demonstration of marker rescue". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 79 (5): 1593–6. March 1982. PMID 6951197.
- ↑ "Construction of poxviruses as cloning vectors: insertion of the thymidine kinase gene from herpes simplex virus into the DNA of infectious vaccinia virus". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 79 (16): 4927–31. August 1982. PMID 6289324.
- ↑ "Construction of live vaccines by using genetically engineered poxviruses: biological activity of recombinant vaccinia virus expressing influenza virus hemagglutinin". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 80 (17): 5364–8. September 1983. PMID 6310573.
- ↑ "Construction of live vaccines using genetically engineered poxviruses: biological activity of vaccinia virus recombinants expressing the hepatitis B virus surface antigen and the herpes simplex virus glycoprotein D". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 81 (1): 193–7. January 1984. PMID 6320164.
- ↑ "The complete DNA sequence of vaccinia virus". Virology 179 (1): 247–66, 517–63. November 1990. PMID 2219722.
- ↑ "NEW YORK STATE WEIGHS VENTURE TO MARKET VACCINE" (in en). https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/30/nyregion/new-york-state-weighs-venture-to-market-vaccine.html.
- ↑ "Safe and effective poxvirus vectors--NYVAC and ALVAC". Developments in Biological Standardization 82: 65–9. 1994. PMID 7958484.
- ↑ "Highly attenuated poxvirus vectors: NYVAC, ALVAC and TROVAC". Developments in Biological Standardization 84: 159–63. 1995. PMID 7796949.
- ↑ "Phase I/IIa safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy trial of NYVAC-Pf7, a pox-vectored, multiantigen, multistage vaccine candidate for Plasmodium falciparum malaria". The Journal of Infectious Diseases 177 (6): 1664–73. June 1998. PMID 9607847.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 "The evolution of poxvirus vaccines". Viruses 7 (4): 1726–803. April 2015. doi:10.3390/v7041726. PMID 25853483.
- ↑ "Safety and reactogenicity of canarypox ALVAC-HIV (vCP1521) and HIV-1 gp120 AIDSVAX B/E vaccination in an efficacy trial in Thailand". PLOS One 6 (12): e27837. 2011. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027837. PMID 22205930.
Patents
Google Patent of Paoletti's patents
External links
- Google Scholar of Paoletti's publications
- New York Times article on Paoletti's announcement of the discovery of vaccinia vectored vaccines (1983)
- New York Times article on Paoletti's vaccine against herpes (1983)
Time magazine article Made-to-Order Vaccines (1983)
- New York Times Magazine article on new vaccine developments (1984)
- Science and Technology Article on Vaccinia vectored vaccines (1985)
- New York Times article on Vaccinia-vectored vaccines (1988)
- The Scientist brief on Virogenetics and Institut Merieux partnership (1990)
- Review: Big Shot. Passion, Politics and the Struggle for an AIDS vaccine by Patricia Thomas (2002)
- Tribute to Dr. Paoletti in Il Tirreno, Lucca Edition (In Italian, January 23, 2018)
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