Jerrejef (sp?) Tony,
Thank you very much for forwarding the article below. Have a good night or
is it morning?!!
Cheers,
Madiba.
On Mon, 6 Dec 1999, Tony Cisse wrote:
> Jaajef Madiba and all those interrested ion the subject,
>
> I have come more details of the Colombian vaccination I mentioned in my last posting on the issue: Manuel Patarroyo, and also a useful discussion list for anyone interested in researching for more information on Malaria (see below).
>
> Yeenduleen ak jaama
>
> Tony
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Manuel Patarroyo- Colombia
>
> Manuel Patarroyo, a Colombian research scientist, has developed the world's first safe and
> effective malaria vaccine. The vaccine is the first against a parasite.
>
> The vaccine has been proven effective between 30 and 60 percent of the time to those over
> one year old. At a 30% effectiveness rate, the vaccine could protect 100 million people
> from malaria, and could save 1 million lives out of an annual death toll of 3 million. No
> vaccine has ever protected that many people.
>
> Patarroyo claims that his work and the efforts of his Third World colleagues are often
> treated with a condescension bordering on racism by northern scientists. He points out that
> it took his Bogota laboratory four years to develop the world's first safe and effective
> malaria vaccine, but six years to have it recognized.
>
> There were discussions with a major pharmaceutical company to manufacture the vaccine
> in Switzerland, but that would have made the price very high. Patarroyo insisted that the
> vaccine be produced in Columbia, in order to keep the price low. If produced in Europe or
> the US, the price per dose would have been $10, but by producing the vaccine in Colombia,
> it is estimated that it will cost 40 cents per dose.
>
> Rather than profit from his discovery, Patarroyo turned the patent for his vaccine over to
> the World Health Organization (WHO) for free, because he felt that the benefits should go
> to mankind, not to large pharmaceutical houses or rich investors.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Scientific American
>
> Vol. 275, no. 6, December 1996, pages 28-29
> Profile: Manuel Elkin Patarroyo, the man who would conquer
> malaria (by Marquerite Holloway)
> Patarroyo developed a vaccine for malaria by synthesising peptides
> identical to those of the virulent strain of the malaria parasite. This
> article reveals something of the man, his research, and the controversy
> surrounding his vaccine.
>
> MANUEL ELKIN PATARROYO
>
> The Man Who Would
> Conquer Malaria
>
> The turn-of-the-century stone building is rotting inside, floorboards dusty and
> dilapidated, pigeons roosting in the eaves. There are no windows in the moldy sills,
> and weeds are thriving--even this structure in the middle of Bogotá, Colombia,
> suggests the jungle is not so very far away. "This is how my buildings always come,"
> says Manuel Elkin Patarroyo, proud of the efforts that have transformed other nearby
> structures into a charming enclave, complete with gardens, that recall the Pasteur
> Institute in Paris--a similarity that delights Patarroyo, because he says that it irritates
> his rivals there.
>
> Once restored, this addition to the Institute of Immunology at the San Juan de Dios
> Hospital will permit Patarroyo to expand his research empire and to begin
> mass-producing the source of his fame and his controversy: the malaria vaccine
> SPf66. But the immunologist does not want to dally in the ruined building and talk
> about whether the world is going to want such vast quantities of the compound. The
> day is slipping away, it's already 10 o'clock in the morning, and there are labs to dash
> through and years of work to review.
>
> Patarroyo has a talent for transforming more than architecture. In the decade since he
> appeared on the international immunology scene, he has ridden innumerable highs
> and lows. Currently, in the eyes of many researchers, he is down again--this time for
> good. The most recent trial of SPf66 (published in the Lancet in September) failed:
> Thai children given several inoculations were no more protected than those given
> placebo. This finding follows a 1995 study of young children in the Gambia that also
> found the vaccine ineffective.
>
> But Patarroyo has rebounded before. And anyway, to his mind no such thing as a
> down period exists--no matter what the studies find. His spirit is irrepressible, as is
> his belief that he does not have to answer his critics, that all will be made clear
> eventually. "I don't care. They cannot touch me. It is their problem," he states
> emphatically. "My enthusiasm will not leave me for a minute. The opposite! They
> don't know what a favor they do me."
>
> Then he is off again, dashing through another lab and sliding down the length of a hall
> to answer a telephone. In rapid succession, he gives a tour of the molecular modeling
> room, the place where work on tuberculosis and on leishmaniasis is being conducted,
> and the "peptideria," where the synthesized peptides that form the basis of the
> malaria vaccine are stored. He also points out myriad other labs and the entrance to
> the restricted area where SPf66 is made. "I usually arrive at eight in the morning, and
> I leave at 10 P.M., Saturdays included. It is not unusual for me, because it is as I
> want it to be," he says, pausing in front of a mural, one of the many works given to
> the institute by famous Latin American artists. "If you are doing what you want and
> what you like, you do not feel a tension. My wife and my family are used to that."
>
> A group of his colleagues passes at that moment, and Patarroyo ruffles their hair,
> slaps them on the back, teases them. They laugh and joke with him. He explains--still
> for a moment against the swirling, colorful backdrop of "A Sense of Immunology," by
> Colombian painter Gustavo Zalamea--that he sets up competitions in order to get
> work done more quickly. He has promised trips to Cartagena, a beautiful city on the
> coast, or seats at one of the Nobel ceremony dinners if his researchers finish projects
> ahead of schedule. "But I tell them, 'You son of a gun, if you want to go the Nobel,
> you have to buy a tuxedo, because we are not going to be underdeveloped,' " he
> laughs.
>
> Patarroyo refers often to his position as a Third World scientist in the First World
> research community. Yet he is in a very privileged situation. In Colombia, Patarroyo
> is a national hero; according to a magazine poll, his popularity exceeds that of his
> good friend, author Gabriel García Márquez. His funding is guaranteed by the
> government, as is his access to a large population of owl monkeys, some of the only
> animals that can serve as hosts for the malaria parasites that plague humans. Unlike
> many researchers whose finances are linked to their results and to being politic,
> Patarroyo really is free to ignore his critics.
>
> He is not free, however, to ignore the realities of life in Colombia--where numerous
> guerrilla groups vie for power, where the drug trade bleeds into every activity and
> where the magic realism of García Márquez can seem prosaic. This summer one of
> Patarroyo's shipments of white powder--that would be SPf66--was replaced with
> vials of a quite different white powder. And a few years ago Patarroyo and his family
> encountered guerrillas on a drive home to Bogotá from some pre-Columbian ruins. "I
> was captured for five hours because they wanted to talk to me," Patarroyo says,
> making light of the experience, his voice perhaps more quiet than he realizes.
>
> But what makes him most happy about his notoriety, Patarroyo continues quickly, is
> that young Colombians are becoming interested in science. Another poll pronounced
> that 67 percent of the nation's kids want to be scientists. "What other success could I
> claim better than that one? To have brought into this country a consciousness,"
> Patarroyo exclaims. "So for the children, rather than being Maradonas [the Argentine
> soccer great] or rock stars, no! They want to be scientists, and I think that is very
> important in our country."
>
> Patarroyo himself had a very particular vision as a youth, as he tells it: "It was when I
> was 11, really, that I liked chemistry so much. And my dream was always to make
> chemically synthesized vaccines." His parents were both business people and wanted
> their children to be the same; they ended up with five physicians, one nurse and one
> child psychologist among their progeny. Although Patarroyo opposed his parents'
> business values, he acknowledges that his father gave him a firm sense that whatever
> he did, he must be useful to humankind.
>
> He left his hometown of Ataco, in the Tolima region, to attend medical school in
> Bogotá. He says that he was a mediocre medical student and that it was not until his
> internship at San Juan de Dios that he understood what science was about. "It was
> so beautiful to me to save lives," he muses. "I wanted to make vaccines because I
> wanted to be useful."
>
> In the late 1960s Patarroyo went abroad--something he encourages his researchers
> to do. After a short stint in virology at Yale University in 1968, Patarroyo worked in
> immunology at the Rockefeller University for several years. He then returned to
> Colombia, where he studied various infectious diseases until a colleague urged him to
> change his focus. "He said I was an idiot, that I was working on a problem that was
> not as important as malaria. Then he gave me the statistics," Patarroyo recounts as he
> drives carefully but quickly through the Bogotá traffic to a traditional Colombian
> restaurant. Every year as many as 500 million people contract malaria; between 1.5
> and three million of them, mostly children, die. Treatment of the disease is tricky,
> because strains of the parasite in many regions have become resistant to the principal
> drug, chloroquine, and the alternative, Lariam, increasingly appears to be highly toxic.
>
> Patarroyo's approach to developing a malaria vaccine was unusual. Instead of
> creating it from dead or weakened strains of the malaria parasite, he synthesized
> peptides identical to those used by the most virulent strain, Plasmodium falciparum.
> At the time of Patarroyo's initial experiments, few immunologists thought
> manufactured peptides could produce a strong immune response. Patarroyo
> nonetheless tested various peptides for their ability to produce antibodies in monkeys
> and settled on four: one used by the parasite during its larval stage and three used by
> the mature parasite to bind to and infect red blood cells. In 1987 he reported that
> vaccination protected 50 percent of the monkeys. Controversy subsequently flared
> up when investigators could not replicate the results; Patarroyo claims they used a
> different compound.
>
> Pausing in the middle of his lunch, Patarroyo starts to sketch a timeline on a yellow
> pad, marking the dates of his papers. Right after his first success, he fell into his first
> quagmire. "I made a mistake because of my ignorance in epidemiology," he explains.
> He decided to vaccinate Colombians but did not set up a double-blind study. He
> was roasted by the scientific community for his methodology and for the ethics of
> moving so quickly to human trials.
>
> As other results were reported over the years--the vaccine was consistently safe but
> proved inconsistently protective--the community continued to divide. "He has always
> been a very intense personality, provoking strong emotions," notes Hans Wigzell,
> head of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. "I have been very impressed by his
> capacity to press on. His science is like brute force." Wigzell cautions that even early
> on Patarroyo "had the feeling that people didn't understand him. So this is not
> something that has just popped up. Personally, I like him."
>
> Even though most studies found the vaccine benefited only about 30 to 40 percent of
> patients, many in public health were delighted: 30 percent of 500 million is still a great
> deal. SPf66 was held to a different standard than other vaccines because of the
> peculiarities of malaria: even people who have developed natural immunity to the
> parasite often lose it. As major trials in Colombia and then in Tanzania bolstered the
> 30 percent or so figure, it seemed as though Patarroyo was vindicated. In 1995 he
> donated the rights to the vaccine to the World Health Organization.
>
> Then came the Gambia and Thailand. Although some immunologists maintain they are
> not ready to give up on SPf66, they are frustrated by the variability of the results.
> "There has got to be some way of evaluating why it is or it is not working," comments
> Louis Miller of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
>
> Patarroyo notes that there may be reasons for the inconsistencies: very young
> children's immune systems, such as those of the six- to 11-month-olds inoculated in
> the Gambia, are different from those of adults; the vaccine used in Thailand may not
> have been identical to SPf66; genetic variability determines immune responses. But,
> he adds, he is uninterested in point-counterpoint. He just wants to keep going,
> studying ways of improving the vaccine and of developing others. That is the credo of
> the institute, he insists: "It is the search for the essence of things. It is not that we are
> going to develop a malaria vaccine.. It is that we want to develop a methodology.
> Really to make vaccines." Then Patarroyo hints that his new research will illuminate
> why SPf66 seems so mercurial.
>
> Whatever he may have in the wings, SPf66 remains the only malaria vaccine in trials,
> and his work, confounding and controversial, has enlivened the field. As for
> Patarroyo, he seems thrilled as always to be a scientist, thrilled to be directing his
> laboratory and thrilled to be free to think and transform. "We are really privileged,
> scientists," he says, skipping up the stairs to his office a little more slowly than usual
> because of lunch. "We get to have intellectual development! How many get to have
> that? Most people have to do things they don't like."
>
> --Marguerite Holloway
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Malaria discussion mail server
>
> I have established a malaria discussion mailing list over the Internet. This will provide a forum for
> anyone wishing to ask, preach or communicate on the general subject of malaria. At last count there
> were about 828 recipients, many of which I had unilaterally joined up myself, and several interesting
> discussions have been held. I would like to join up more people if I can get their e-mail addresses. It
> is run on a listserver at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and can be accessed
> by anyone with an e-mail address. To join, you send a subscription message which places your name
> on a list of mail recipients. If you later send a mail message to the discussion group, it will
> automatically be sent to all the people who have subscribed. As more people subscribe your
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> your questions answered.
>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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