Vaccines and Their Promise Are Roaring Back - NYT

THE prospect of profit drives innovators, perhaps as much as solving the technical problems that make innovation possible.

This truism is gaining new currency among innovators in the once-legendary field of vaccines. In the 1950s, vaccine inventors were the stars of American innovation, celebrated the way Steve Jobs of Apple and the pair who founded Google are today. In 1955, Jonas Salk virtually wiped out polio with a vaccine, becoming the most celebrated scientist in America. In a phenomenal run starting in the late 1950s, Maurice Hilleman created vaccines for flu, measles, mumps, rubella and other illnesses, getting credit for saving more lives than any medical innovator in history.

By the mid-1990s, however, innovation in vaccines had virtually come to a halt. Only a handful of companies even tried to develop new ones, compared with 25 in 1955.

But in a stunning reversal, innovators today are chasing dozens of vaccines, stimulated by some recent high-profile successes. “People see vaccines as money makers,” says Paul A. Offit, chief of the infectious diseases section at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the author of “Vaccinated,” a new book on Hilleman’s career.