Dr. Maurice Hilleman	Dr Edgar Ribi
Dr. Ernst Eichwald	Dr. Leroy Hood

Dr. Maurice Hilleman
Our first inductee is Maurice Ralph Hilleman, whose vaccines have probably saved more lives than any scientist in the past century.

“Among scientists, he is a legend. But to the general public, he is the world’s best kept secret,” noted Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “I think, without hyperbole, he as an individual has had a more positive impact on the health of the world than any other scientist, any other vaccinologist, in history.”

Dr. Hilleman created eight of the 14 most commonly used vaccines, including those for mumps, measles, chicken pox, pneumonia, meningitis, rubella and many other infectious diseases. His measles vaccine alone is estimated to prevent 1 million deaths worldwide every year. In addition to his creation of nearly 40 vaccines, Dr. Hilleman discovered several viruses and discovered the genetic changes that occur when the influenza virus mutates, known as shift and drift.

A native of Miles City, he grew up on a relative’s farm with seven siblings and went on to graduate from Montana State University and receive his doctoral degree in microbiology from the University of Chicago. Dr. Hilleman died in 2005 at the age of 85.

In an oft-told story, one of his daughters contracted mumps in 1963, just before he was to leave on an overseas trip. He took a culture from her throat, immersed the swabs in beef broth and took them to the laboratory freezer in the middle of the night. He later used the specimen to isolate the mumps virus, grow it in the cells of chicken embryos and produce a very weak version of the virus, enough to trigger the body’s defenses and immunize whoever took the vaccine. He named it the Jeryl Lynn strain, after that daughter.

He was most proud of his work controlling infectious diseases in children, the combined MMR shot and the hepatitis vaccines.

“Well, looking back on one’s lifetime, you say, ‘Gee, what have I done—have I done enough for the world to justify having been here?’ That’s a big worry—to people from Montana, at least. And I would say I’m kind of pleased about all this,” he said. “I would do it over again because there’s great joy in being useful, and that’s the satisfaction that you get out of it. Other than that, it’s the quest of science and winning a battle over these damn bugs.”

Dr. Maurice Ralph Hilleman
“Goddamnit, science has to produce something useful. That’s the payback to society for support of the enterprise.” – Maurice Hilleman, 1999

 

Dr. Edgar Ribi
While Montana has a long tradition of producing leaders in the life sciences, perhaps no one’s work has made a more significant economic contribution to our state than that of Edgar Ribi.  His discoveries and work have directly led to the establishment of the GlasxoSmithKline (GSK) presence in Hamilton.

Born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1920, Dr. Ribi and his family immigrated to the United States where he eventually headed the biophysics section and became Acting Chief at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases Lab-Hamilton’s Rocky Mountain Labs (RML).

Ribi was interested in applying chemical technologies to the study of immunology and discovered a cure for a type of bovine and equine cancer.  At the time, it was known that certain kinds of bacteria act as adjuvants, meaning they stimulate the body’s immune responses.  Ribi used his chemical background to dissect the bacteria and reassemble its componenets into nonharmful adjuvants.

Unable to get his research funded and wanting to find commercial applications for his work, Ribi founded Ribi ImmunoChem Research in 1981, which became a leading biochemical research company.  The company worked on anti-caner agents, anti-infectious agents and super vaccines.  Some of the products it developed were Ribigen(an anti-tumor agent used in cattle), Detox (a human anti-cancer agent) and Ovamid (an anti-tumor agent intended for treating ovarian and cervical cancers).

Gary Christianson, a former site director at GSK, noted that Ribi’s research, in its most basic form, was at RML where he was really studying the immune system.  He discovered a method to detoxity endotoxin is now the key adjuvant (immunobooster) component in many of GSK’s vaccines (including their HPV vaccine) the reason Corixa bought Ribi and GSK bought Corixa.

Ribi died unexpectedly in 1986 at the age of 66.  His company, ImmunoChem, was acquired by Corixa Corporation in 1999 and by GSK in 2005.  But his work and legacy continue stronger than ever in Hamilton, Montana, a place that became home.

He wrote about the story of going to Calgary in the early 1950’s to pick up his U.S. immigration visas with a colleague.  “Re-entering the U.S. was not so easy and for some hours we were in No-Man’s Land.  The custome officer needed more than just proof with documents.  We had to name a person in the U.S. whom he knew and who knew us.  This person turned out to be the Sheriff of Hamilton, Montana, and a telephone conversation between the two officials made it possible to happily enter U.S. and Montana territory.  For us, Montana became the permanent home and the U.S. the new home country.”

 

Dr. Ernst Eichwald
Our inductee this year is Dr. Ernst Eichwald, an early trailblazer in the field of tissue transplantation and the founder of the lab that was eventually to become the McLaughlin Research Institute in Great Falls.

Born in Hanover Germany, Dr. Eichwald received a medical degree from Freiburg, before moving to the United States in 1938 at the age of 25. He continued his studies in pathology and during WW II served as head of laboratory services in the U.S. Army, in various locations in the Pacific theatre. After the war, he became an Associate Professor of Pathology at the University of Utah.

Eichwald’s impact in Montana began in 1953 and lasted nearly 15 years. Recruited to run a research program at Deaconess Hospital in Great Falls, he established the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine, which evolved into McLaughlin. The work there played an important role in the eventual development of successful protocols for organ transplantation in humans.

An internationally renowned scientist, he organized the first International Transplantation Conference; founded and edited the journal Transplantation for 30 years; and chaired the Transplantation Committee of the National Academy of Sciences from 1955 to 1967. During this time he also served as a Professor of Microbiology at Montana State University, Bozeman.

Eichwald continually looked to enhance the research capabilities around Great Falls. In a 1965 letter to Dr. Michael DeBakey, who had just been appointed by President Johnson to Chair the Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke, he lobbied for a specialized medical research center in Montana, telling DeBakey of the doubling of their research capabilities with the recruitment of Jack Stimpfling from Bar Harbor, Maine and ending by noting, “it seems that we shall have lots of fun.”

His contributions to Montana extended beyond expanding research capabilities and attracting talent to Great Falls. One local 16-year-old high school student who volunteered to work in his pathology lab tells this story, ‘Dr Eichwald had made a fascinating discovery: if he grafted skin from a male mouse into a genetically identical inbred female mouse, the female would reject the graft. Why does this happen? He asked me.’

‘Even though I was a B+ student, I knew it had to be about either hormones or the Y chromosome. And because Eichwald gave me free rein to do my own research, I conducted one experiment that ruled out hormones and another that explored how pre-immunizing the females with male cells led to accelerated rejection. Discovering that it was the Y chromosome hooked me on medical science,’ says Irv Weissman, one of the leading stem cell scientists in the world today.

Eichwald returned to chair the Department of Pathology at the University of Utah, soon after McLaughlin opened its doors in 1967, but maintained strong ties to his colleagues in Montana until his passing in 2007.

Dr. Leroy Hood
Our new inductee this year is Dr. Leroy Hood, referred to by Fortune Magazine as the man who automated biology. Dr. Hood is recognized as one of the world’s leading scientists in molecularbiotechnology and genomics. He joins a long list of Montanans who have become significant figures in the biosciences industry globally.

Born in Missoula in 1938, Dr. Hood grew up and attended high school in Shelby. Both his father, an electrical engineer, and grandfather who managed the Beartooth Geologic Research Camp instilled in him a love for science. A high school science project won him the honor of being selected a finalist in the 1956 Westinghouse Science Talent Search. As he recalls, “This was a big deal. Shelby, Montana, had never had anything like that happen before. When I left to go to Washington, the high school band came down and played.”

Dr. Hood went on to receive an undergraduate degree in biology from California Institute of Technology (1960), an M.D. degree in Medicine from John Hopkins University in 1964 and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1968. He has been the recipient of many internationally recognized awards.

What has distinguished Dr. Hood’s life as a visionary scientist has been driven by the conviction that the needs of frontier biology should drive the selection of technologies to be developed, and once a new technology is developed these technologies can revolutionize biology and medicine. He tells a story that when he attended Caltech in 1970, he told the chair, “I want to spend half my time doing technology development.”

After three years the chair came to me and said, “I advise you in the strongest possible terms to give this up.” Twenty years later, he told me that was because his senior faculty felt it was inappropriate to have engineering in a biology department. But, I went on and did it and it worked very well.

Dr. Hood’s research has focused on the study of molecular immunology, biotechnology, and genomics and in developing several instruments, which constitute the technological foundation for modern molecular biology and genomics. He has applied these technologies to diverse fields including immunology, neurobiology, cancer biology, molecular evolution and systems medicine. In addition, he has also played a role in founding numerous biotechnology companies, including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Systemix, Darwin, Rosetta, and MacroGenics.

His vision in recent years has focused on what he refers to as P4 medicine. Over the next 15-20 years, he believes health care will move from its current largely reactive state to one that is predictive, that is personalized, that is eventually preventive and participatory.

In 2000, Dr. Hood co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington to pioneer systems approaches to biology and medicine. He serves as President of the Institute and continues to pursue his interest in biology, medicine, technology, development, and computational biology.

Earlier this year Ohio State University approved a two-year collaboration with the Institute to carry the P4 idea forward. Ohio State provides a group of 55,000 insured employees and family members who could enroll in clinical trials, plus a group of physicians motivated to be on the front line of personalized medicine. The Institute for Systems Biology will contribute cutting-edge analysis of genes and proteins from samples so the physicians can gather useful information to monitor patients and guide their wellness.

The vision is that instead of waiting for clinical symptoms to appear, like a tumor spotted on an X-ray after it’s too late, physicians will eventually be able to see early warning signs of malignancies from a pinprick of blood analyzed by genomic instruments and software. If the genes and proteins are truly predictive, then doctors could take early action, or people could adjust their lifestyles accordingly to prevent disease.