The father of modern-day vaccinations: Rino Rappuoli named European Inventor Award 2017 finalist

• Italian microbiologist nominated for European Patent Office (EPO) prize for dedicating his scientific life to developing a new generation of vaccines
• Rappuoli's vaccines have been administered to millions worldwide and have practically eradicated diseases such as diphtheria, bacterial meningitis and whooping cough in the developed world
• Rappuoli has pioneered "reverse vaccinology", a genome-based approach to vaccine development
• EPO President Battistelli: "Rappuoli has unlocked the beneficial potential of genomics for public healthcare with novel vaccines, saving millions of lives from formerly deadly infections"

Munich, 26 April 2017 - Pandemic infections that used to claim the lives of millions - including smallpox, tuberculosis and polio - can be prevented by simple injections with vaccines. Until the late 1990s, some pathogens were hard to target with vaccines. This is when the pioneering efforts of Italian microbiologist Rino Rappuoli (65) changed the paradigm: his genome-derived vaccines have created an effective defence against infections such as diphtheria, bacterial meningitis, and whooping cough, and practically eradicated a host of deadly diseases.

For these contributions, Rino Rappuoli has been named as one of three finalists for the European Inventor Award 2017 in the category "Lifetime Achievement". The winners of the 12^th edition of the EPO's annual innovation prize will be announced at a ceremony in Venice on 15 June.

"Rappuoli has unlocked the beneficial potential of genomics for public healthcare with novel vaccines and opened the door for a more efficient way of tackling pandemic infections," said EPO President Benoît Battistelli announcing the European Inventor Award 2017 finalists. "The new generation of vaccines brought about a paradigm change, saving millions of lives from formerly deadly infections such as diphteria, bacterial menengitis and pertussis. His vaccines are now standard immunisations administered to millions across the globe, and also hold the potential to effectively fightinfections in less-developed regions."

The Italian biologist reached his first breakthrough in 1993 during his tenure at Sclavo Research Center in Siena, Italy, an influential laboratory known for vaccine development. Looking for a way to develop vaccines against infections that resisted traditional vaccine designs, Rappuoli used genetics to engineer vaccinations out of cellular building blocks: Taking only specific pieces of bacteria cells, namely surface sugars known as polysaccharides, and attaching ("conjugating") them to carrier proteins resulted in a strong immune system response. These new "conjugate vaccines" were the first jabs to build immunity against problematic infections such as diphtheria, whooping cough, haemophilus influenza and helicobacter. Through a lifetime of contributions, Rappuoli is credited as one of the co-founders of cellular microbiology - the intersection of cell biology and microbiology - and also pioneered novel techniques that improved the state of the art in genetic research and vaccine design.   

Reversing vaccinology: a pioneering approach

Before Rappuoli's game-changing inventions, the active ingredients in vaccines consisted of "weakened" versions of actual pathogens that triggered the body into building immunity. But this practice, devised by French microbiologist Louis Pasteur in the 1880s, had its limits: Aggressive infections such as meningococcus - the bacterium behind infectious meningitis - failed to respond to this approach. In 1997, Rappuoli reached out to Craig Venter, the American biotechnologist credited with mapping the human genome, with a request to sequence the DNA of meningococcus. The resulting insights formed the basis for Rappuoli's ground-breaking process of what he calls "reverse vaccinology", used to create the world's first genome-derived vaccines in 1999. Rappuoli not only made history by developing and patenting the first-ever vaccines for each strand of meningococcal meningitis (A, B, C, Y and W-135), but also founded a new breed of laboratory technology. "Vaccines are now no longer based on grown agents, but are designed on the computer using genomics," says Rappuoli. This means Rappuoli's serum only contains the precise components necessary for immunisation, and, added to this, there are no longer any serious side effects.

Societal and economic impact in industrialised countries

The direct impact of Rappuoli's vaccines can hardly be overstated: His vaccinations against diseases such as diphtheria, bacterial meningitis and whooping cough have been administered to millions worldwide as part of routine vaccination programmes. First released in 1993 by California-based biotechnology company Chiron, Rappuoli's vaccine against pertussis (whooping cough) eradicated the disease in Italy within 24 months.

In the late 1990s, meningitis C was incorporated into the UK's national immunisation programme and it virtually eradicated the disease within two years. In 2015, the meningitis B vaccine was incorporated into the UK national immunisation programme, and public health experts estimate that the vaccine had an effectiveness of 95%.

Rappuoli's anti-meningitis vaccine, Bexsero, proved a blockbuster drug for licensee GlaxoSmithKline: In 2016, sales of Bexsero reached EUR 464.8 million, a nearly four-fold increase from EUR 136.19 million in 2015. In the UK and other European countries, Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PVC) is routinely administered to infants, while 82.9% of American children between 19 to 35 months old received conjugate vaccines against pneumococcal disease in 2014. Third-party analysts at Transparency Market Research valued the global meningococcal vaccines market at EUR 1.36 billion in 2013, with projected growth to EUR 4 billion per year by 2022. Within that market, conjugate vaccines and the vaccine developed by reverse vaccinology are dominant forces, expected to account for 71% of total revenues - or EUR 2.8 billion by 2022.

Overcoming barriers in developing countries

Meanwhile, some diseases remain rampant in resource-poor regions, where immunisation schemes have yet to be deployed. For instance, invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) still causes at least 1.2 million infections that have a high mortality rate if untreated. Addressing the issue, Rino Rappuoli has founded the Global Health Institute in Siena, a non-profit organisation that makes affordable vaccines available in the developing world. "Vaccines can do a lot to reduce the gap between rich and poor countries. We need to fill this gap," says Rappuoli about his mission.

A lifetime of genetic research

At a young age, Rino Rappuoli was inspired to fight infectious diseases by the unfinished cathedral wall in his native Siena, Italy: The uncompleted building is a reminder of the year 1348, when the "Black Death" decimated Siena's population from 100 000 to 30 000 in just three months. "This wiped out the entire technological and artistic development of the city and such a thing should never happen again," says Rappuoli, "so I decided to devote my entire life to the development of vaccines." After earning his PhD in biological sciences from the University of Siena in 1978, he developed a passion for cell biology during a research fellowship at Italian immunisation research centre, Sclavo Research Center. Stints at Harvard and Rockefeller Universities introduced Rappuoli to cutting-edge genetic engineering techniques, which he evolved into his own breakthroughs.

Today, Rappuoli is the Chief Scientist at global pharmaceutical manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Vaccines and his current research consists of finding vaccines for Respiratory Syncytial virus, Cytomegalovirus and emerging infectious diseases.

He is credited as the author of around 150 granted and pending European patent families and has received high honours in his fieldsuch as the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize (1991), the Italian Gold Medal for Public Healthcare (2005), and the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal (2009).

Rappuoli was voted the world's third-most influential person in the field of vaccines at the Terrapinn World Vaccine Congress in 2013 and awarded Fellowship of Imperial College Faculty of Medicine London in 2015.

Additional resources

• Video and photo material
• Read more about the inventor
• View the patents: EP1379272, EP0632727, EP2470204 and many more

Preparing for future pandemics

While scientific progress has made great strides in curbing the spread of infectious diseases, Rino Rappuoli and other scientists remain concerned about future plagues, especially pandemic strains of influenza. In our globally connected world, new diseases may spread at alarming rates: Recent outbreaks such as avian flu proliferate within a matter of days thanks to air travel, whereas the 14^th century "Black Death" took years to spread. Fortunately, scientists are able to engineer new vaccines faster than ever, also thanks to the fundamental insights and laboratory techniques contributed by Rappuoli. Read more about the medical technologies shaping the future of medicine.

• About the European Inventor Award
• About the European Patent Office (EPO)

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