Rino Rappuoli

Rino Rappuoli (* 1952 in Radicofani Siena ) is an Italian physician, who is known for vaccine development. He is the global head of vaccine research at Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics in Siena.

Rappuoli grew up in Siena and studied at the University of Siena and the Washington University Biology. After receiving his doctorate in Siena he went in 1978 to the Italian vaccine research center Sclavo in Siena. In 1979 he spent several months at the Rockefeller University in the laboratory of Emil Gotschlich, a pioneer in the development of meningococcal vaccines, and in 1980 a year at the Harvard Medical School at John Murphy and Alwin Pappenheimer, conducted research on new vaccines, diphtheria (CRM 197). The vaccine was based on a targeted mutation of the gene encoding the toxin of the diphtheria bacterium ( Pappenheimer, 1972). In 1981 Rappuoli back to the Sclavo Research, where he was head of his own laboratory. There he developed the CRM 197 vaccine for mass production maturity. However, it was not used as a diphtheria vaccine, since people would rather stayed with the tried and tested, used since 1924 the old method of vaccination. CRM 197, however, was used in improved vaccines against influenza, pneumococcal and meningococcal where it serves as a carrier protein for the actual vaccine antigen ( a polysaccharide ).

With the same method of targeted mutation of the toxin gene as Pappenheimer the diphtheria toxin he developed in the 1980s, a vaccine against whooping cough. The vaccine was an example of the new generation acellular vaccine ( containing no cell components ). Mid-1990s, sat by the vaccine in the U.S. and Europe, after it was revealed that he was just as effective as traditional vaccines, and had the advantage to require a factor of 10 less molecules. Due to the success of the vaccine, the Sclavo Research was then taken over by the California biotechnology company Chiron (which later came to Novartis). Developed in the 1990s Rappuoli with colleagues based on the CRM 197 carrier protein conjugate vaccines against meningococcal disease ( subtype A and C). Vaccination with the vaccine against meningococcal type C began in the UK in 1999 and led to the infection was virtually eradicated by 2001.

Also since the 1990s, it deals in Siena intensively with Helicobacter pylori, the cause of gastric ulcers, but this did not lead to the development of a vaccine but the basic research, since Helicobacter provides the novel example of a bacterium that with the help of an injected into the host cell toxin causes cancer.

Rappuoli is also considered one of the founders of reverse vaccinology, based on sequencing of the genome of the pathogen. He first applied this method on the search for a vaccine against meningococcal subtype B. He convinced 1997 Craig Venter, who had already been sequenced with his company TIGR genome of the influenza virus to address the sequencing of Neisseria meningitidis type B, which succeeded to 2000 and held well delivered a dozen over 90 potential surface proteins as targets for vaccines. Rappuoli worked based on the fact in the 2000s in the development of a vaccine against meningococcal Type B.

Since the late 1990s, he also developed vaccines against bird flu, which showed the benefits of adjuvant MF 59.

In 1991 he was awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize. He was a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences, 2005. In 2009 he was awarded the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize -.

Writings

• Giuseppe Del Giudice with (Editor) influenza vaccines of the future, 2nd edition, Springer 2011
• Cesare Montecucco with (Editor) Guidebook to protein toxins and Their use in cell biology, Oxford University Press 1997
• With Fabio Bagnoli (Editor) Vaccine design - Innovative Approaches and novel strategies, Caister Academic Press 2011
• With Vincenzo Scarlato, Beatrice Arico (Editor ) Signal transduction and bacterial virulence, Springer 1995