Scissors and crazy glue: Lorne Babiuk, award-winning vaccine evangelist, speaks his (clear) mind in Ottawa

Vish Nene and new ILRI Board Member

Director of ILRI’s vaccine development program Vish Nene (left) with Canadian vaccinologist and ILRI board member Lorne Babiuk (right) at morning tea with ILRI staff (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

Canadian Lorne Babiuk, an internationally recognized leader in vaccine research, visited the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Ottawa yesterday (8 Oct 2013) to deliver a live webcast talk on exciting breakthroughs in the development of animal vaccines, which, he argued, can both improve global food security and reduce the global impacts of infectious diseases.

Babiuk is vice-president of research at the University of Alberta and the recipient of two recent distinguished awards for his outstanding career in vaccinology — the Gairdner Wightman Award in 2012 and the Killam Prize in Health Sciences in 2013. He serves on the board of trustees of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

For all his illustrious awards, Babiuk talked not like a scientist but rather like ‘a regular guy’, preferring to speak of  ‘scissors’ and ‘crazy glue’ to describe molecular advances in vaccinology rather than use scientific jargon.

Here’s some of what he said.

ON POVERTY
One billion people go to bed hungry every night. Not hungry like you and me when we miss a meal. But hungry, really hungry, every day, day in and day out. By 2050, we’ll have another 2 billion people to feed. The last time I checked, they were not making more land. So we’re going to have to do more with the land (and livestock) that we have. We have an opportunity to develop new approaches to increase food supplies or to have a lot more hungry people.

The developing world is looking for more and more protein; those of us in the developed world should not deny them that.

Livestock are a critical component of smallholder farming, which supports about two billion people, some two-thirds of them women

ON DISEASE
I’ve spent my career in infectious diseases. They matter partly because they cost so much. Alberta has still not recovered from BSE. And SARS cost a staggering USD100 billion—USD2 billion in Ontario alone.

Some 74% of new or emerging diseases are ‘zoonotic’, which means they’re transmitted from animals to humans, or from humans to animals. The economic impacts of zoonoses are huge for farmers, for producers, for international traders . . .

ON DISEASES OF THE DEVELOPING WORLD
I have concerns about Rift Valley fever spreading to North America. The West Nile virus, which has the same kind of vector, has already arrived here.

ON BIOTECH
Technology and biotechnology can be a saviour, but it’s a challenge because we have a large number of people against genetically modified food. We have to work with social scientists to make sure we have healthy animals for healthy people

ON RESEARCH
Basic research and applied research are two sides of the same coin—the two of them need each other.
We no longer train our biologists in broad biology but rather in narrower molecular biology studies. That’s a mistake.
We biological scientists must get smarter at engaging social science and scientists.

ON VACCINES
Vaccination has saved more lives than all other treatments and prophylactics combined.
The traditional types of vaccines, live or killed, have given way to really interesting new types.
We eradicated smallpox with a vaccine; that research would never be approved today because the vaccine has too many side effects.
What can we do to change perceptions of vaccines and biotechnology?
It costs something in the order of one billion dollars to get a vaccine approved.

ON VACCINES FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD
The major obstacle in Africa is to get a commercial company to invest in the regulatory component of a vaccine because there isn’t a financial incentive. You can’t sell a livestock vaccine for much more then 50 cents per dose in a developing countries. That’s why we have to work with African or Asian vaccine companies, which can produce vaccines much cheaper than industrial countries can.

Several diseases in the developing world are protozoan and those are, of course, much bigger challenges. But there have been new donors for protozoan vaccine research. We need to convince more donors that this research is needed.

ON THE ANTI-VACCINE LOBBY
I’m an evangelist for vaccination because I think we have lost the battle to the anti-vaccine lobby. In North Amercia there is a huge anti-tech group. They misquote or use data to push their own agenda at the expense of large numbers of lives lost. Look at the article published decades ago about a possible link between vaccination and autism. Despite decades of subsequent research showing no such links, we still haven’t managed to convince a lot of people that vaccines do not cause autism.

How do we encourage the scientific community to stand up and be more vocal about what they know? We have to continue to advocate and demonstrate what we can do using the new technology. We should promise less and deliver more. We have been our own worst enemies. We have to be realists and say what can be done in what time period. That will give us back some credibility.

People go into science because they like doing the science part of it. If they loved the podium, they would have gone into the social sciences. We need to encourage others to do this kind of communication.

ON TEAM DYNAMICS
Any successful researcher has to stimulate the team around him or her and make them all feel part of something big. Getting people excited about working together as a team, providing a vision, and saying how the team can achieve something, that’s what I’m good at. Get people passionate about something and get them to know it’s their idea. I’m a facilitator. I don’t tell people what to do. I create an environment that facilitates what they do. You have to accept different cultures, different ways of doing science. You have to have patience and go with the flow. I learned patience.

ON HIS SUCCESSFUL CAREER
I still get up in the morning and put one leg in my pants and then the other, just like everyone else.

About CIFSRF
Lorne Babiuk manages a grant funded by the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund (CIFSRF), among others. CIFSRF is a CA$124.5-million program of IDRC undertaken with financial support from the Government of Canada. CIFSRF supports applied research partnerships between Canadian and developing-country organizations to find lasting solutions to hunger and food insecurity. It is a core element of Canada’s Food Security Strategy.

For more information, see the IDRC website.

Experts take up two new director positions at ILRI, world’s leading pro-poor livestock research institute

John Murray McIntire

ILRI’s new deputy director of research in integrated systems John  McIntire.

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) last November appointed two new deputy director generals of research at the institute. American John McIntire, formerly of the World Bank, will direct research on integrated livestock systems at ILRI while Suzanne Bertrand, a Canadian who has been working in the private sector in New Zealand, takes on directorship of ILRI’s biosciences research. This month they took up their new positions, where they also serve on ILRI’s senior management team, reporting to ILRI director general Jimmy Smith.

John McIntire, ILRI deputy director general for integrated systems research
John McIntire is a native Californian who graduated from Occidental College, where he was a member of the regional champion cross-country team, in 1972 with a BA in history. He worked in a pharmaceuticals factory until 1975, when he began graduate studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. In 1980, Fletcher awarded him a PhD in agricultural economics, based in part on fieldwork he had conducted near Segou, in central Mali, from 1977 to 1978. That work, done in collaboration with the West African Rice Development Association (now AfricaRice) and the Malian national research program, was one of the original farm-level studies of smallholder crop production done anywhere in francophone Africa and one of the first to study competition between rainfed and irrigated crops.

After receiving his PhD, McIntire took up a job as research associate at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in Washington, DC, where he published Food Security in the Sahel: Variable Import Levy, Grain Reserves and Foreign Exchange Assistance (1981). This report was one of the first papers to use a quantitative model of food supply and demand to investigate policies for improving food security in West Africa. In 1980, McIntire was appointed principal economist in the West Africa Program of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), where he was based at the Kamboinse Research Station, near Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. There he worked to identify constraints to improving millet and sorghum production in the sub-humid and semi-arid tropics of Burkina Faso, publishing work on village surveys, intercropping and animal traction. In 1981, he moved with ICRISAT to Niger, where he helped establish the ICRISAT Sahelian Centre at Sadore and conducted village-level studies on farmer-managed experiments with new millet-producing techniques involving improved cultivars, intercropping and mineral fertilizers.

McIntire left ICRISAT and Niger in 1984 to take up a position as principal economist at the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA), one of ILRI’s two predecessors, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. While at ILCA, he worked on the economics of ILCA’s priority setting, trypanotolerance (genetic resistance to the disease African animal trypanosomosis), smallholder cattle fattening, crop residue management, alley farming and crop-livestock integration. Based on his work at ILCA and ICRISAT, he published Crop Livestock Integration in Sub-Saharan Africa (1992), with Daniel Bourzat and Prabhu Pingali, a book still widely cited 20 years later.

McIntire joined the World Bank in 1989, where he worked until his retirement in 2011. There he developed and managed a National Agricultural Technology Program for Mexico, which was, at the time, the largest Bank investment in national agricultural research in the world. He later worked as country economist for Côte d’Ivoire, where he was instrumental in the reform of the national cocoa marketing institution and in restructuring that country’s international debt as part of the HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) Initiative. From 2000 to 2004, he was World Bank country director for Senegal, the Gambia, Cape Verde and Guinea. From 2004 to 2007, he served as director for Agricultural, Environmental and Social Development in the Africa Region of the World Bank. His final Bank assignment was country director for Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi, where he managed a team of some 200 people that delivered one of the largest IDA (International Development Association) programs in the world. In 2011, he was the second person to receive both the Bank’s ‘Good Manager Award’ and ‘Green Award for Environmental Leadership’, the latter notably for his work in defending Serengeti National Park.

 

Suzanne Bertrand

ILRI’s new deputy director of research in biosciences Suzanne Bertrand.

Suzanne Bertrand, ILRI deputy director general for biosciences research
Suzanne Bertrand’s background is a unique mix of science and managerial roles in government, academia and the private sector, with long interest and hands-on experience in international development. She has expertise in managing stakeholder and client relationships and in building project engagement strategies.

Bertrand earned a PhD in plant molecular biology at Laval University (French: Université Laval), in Canada’s Quebec Province and began her career as a scientist with Agri-Food Canada, working on forage plants. Her focus shifted rapidly from laboratory-based research to the application of modern agri-technology in the developing world. Her first overseas assignment was as a consulting plant physiologist for a Gansu Forest Nursery Project in the People’s Republic of China, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency; Bertrand served as director of this project for its last three years. She then went to North Africa, again as project director, to manage the installation and start-up of five tree nurseries in Tunisia, a project funded by the Nordic Development Bank and World Bank.

Bertrand spent six years in the USA, first as research assistant professor at North Carolina State University and then as a founding principal for a biotechnology start-up company. She was then recruited as group manager for innovation with Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC), a large dairy breeding enterprise in New Zealand, where she managed LIC’s Research and Development Group, delivering science-based solutions in the areas of genomics, reproductive health, animal evaluation and commercialization to the dairy sector.

In 2008, Bertrand became director of international linkages for the New Zealand Ministry of Research, Science and Technology. In this role, she established an overarching framework for the ministry’s external engagement and developed an International Linkages Strategy for New Zealand science. She was most recently chief executive officer for NZBIO, an NGO representing the interests and supporting the growth of the bioscience sector in New Zealand. Membership in NZBIO spans the spectrum of agbiotech, human health, industrial, environmental and food bioscience, from start-up companies to Crown research institutes and universities to large corporates and multinationals.

Bertrand has a lifelong interest in fine cuisine, art history, all things gardening, and travel.

 

Highlights from speeches at the opening of the Biosciences eastern and central Africa Hub at ILRI

10BecA_Opening_CarlosSereBruceScottRomanoKiome

Carlos Seré, director general of ILRI; Bruce Scott, director of Partnerships and Communications at ILRI; and Romano Kiome, permanent secretary in Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture; in discussion at the official opening of BecA at ILRI (photo credit: ILRI/MacMillan).

Following are key highlights from speeches read on Friday 5 November 2010 during the official opening of the Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) Hub, which is hosted and managed by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), at its Nairobi headquarters and laboratories.

Mohammed Kuti, Kenya’s Minister for Livestock Development said ‘Kenya is proud to host BecA, a modern research facility for sub-Sahara Africa. I am gratified to learn that this facility has adopted an integrated research approach, using biosciences to address animal and plant research, human health as well as the sustainable use of Africa’s natural resources.’

His Excellency, David Collins, Canadian High Commissioner to Kenya said ‘Canada is pleased to celebrate the achievements that have been made in establishing this particular centre of excellence in bioscience in agriculture.

‘In May 2003, Canada announced a contribution of C$30 million to establish the Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) initiative in Kenya. BecA is the first of four networks of centres of excellence across Africa to strengthen Africa’s scientific and technological development. It allows eastern and central African countries to develop and apply bioscience research and expertise.’

‘BecA,’ said Collins, ‘is conducting important research that will help address key agricultural issues, including those facing small-scale African farmers, the majority of whom are women.’

He said Canada’s investment in BecA has supported the construction of new facilities and the renovation of existing facilities, including laboratories. With the completion of construction, the Hub is now in full operation, with a number of significant research programs under way, and quickly gaining regional and international recognition as a world-class facility to support capacity for biosciences in Africa.

‘The hub will enable African scientists and researchers play a major role in helping Africa meet its Millennium Development Goals by 2015 as a more productive and profitable agricultural sector is a critical component in the successful attainment of the MDGs,’ he added.

‘It is exciting to see the birth of a hub that will play a key role in ensuring that Africa drives its own agenda in regards to agriculture and strengthens the research pillar of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program.’ Collins said.

Carlos Seré, director general of ILRI, made the following remarks (full text).

‘It is indeed a very special honour to welcome you to the ILRI campus on the occasion of the opening of the Biosciences eastern and central Africa Hub.

‘Your Excellency, the statue you have just unveiled is an artistic representation of the double helix. The double helix is the recipe for life. Its chains of molecules, the DNA, encode the information that determines the inheritance shaping all living beings: plants, animals and microbes. This beautiful piece of art, produced here in Kenya, very aptly represents what BecA is about: understanding this code of life and using this knowledge to develop novel solutions such as livestock vaccines and improved crops.’

‘Much of this cutting-edge science could up to now only be undertaken in developed countries. The BecA-ILRI Hub now enables scientists from research institutions and universities across eastern and central Africa to come to Nairobi and undertake critical parts of their research with new tools and with support from colleagues with the requisite training and experience.’

‘How did this come about? NEPAD’s Science and Technology program and ILRI approached the Government of Canada in 2002 with a plan to refurbish ILRI’s laboratories and have ILRI provide, on behalf of NEPAD, a shared biosciences platform to provide African scientists with access to the most advanced facilities and equipment to conduct biosciences research of strategic importance for Africa’s development. This Hub forms part of NEPAD’s African Biosciences Initiative, which is creating a continent-wide network of shared biosciences research facilities.’

‘ILRI’s board of trustees and management team saw this as a logical evolution in its contribution to the continent’s development, responding on the one hand to the urgent need to boost biosciences capacity on the continent and on the other to the advantages of sharing such facilities. This is further driven by the fact that all agricultural research builds on the shared basic knowledge of biology, which underpins work in plants, animals and microbes. BecA is about exploiting this common body of knowledge to leapfrog the search for solutions. This is BecA’s unique contribution to Africa’s science endeavour. The laboratories will be equipped with contamination-free flooring to ensure the highest standards of research quality and safety.’

‘Beyond supporting the global community’s agenda of using livestock and livestock innovations as a pathway out of poverty, ILRI agreed to share its facilities with a wider array of African and international partners to better utilize this power of modern biosciences.’

‘Today we are witnessing the realization of that shared dream. Your Excellency, the strong support of the Kenyan Government to ILRI over the years has been critical to making this happen. Dr Romano Kiome, your Permanent Secretary of Agriculture and ILRI board member, passionately supported this initiaitive in its early days and chaired its first steering committee. Similarly, the financial and technical support of the Government of Canada  and many other development partners was absolutely critical. NEPAD’s vision and leadership in driving a continent-wide strategy for science and technology as a key building block for Africa’s development provided a strong case for creating BecA.

‘It is widely recognized that partnerships are critical to achieving significant impacts on the ground at the required speed. BecA is an innovative and complex partnership and a new way of operating across the boundaries of organizations. We are committed to working with all of you to make it flourish. To turn science into products for Africa, we will need to reach out to an even more diverse range of partners in the coming years. We thank your Excellency and the many other people and institutions who contributed to make BecA a reality.’

‘Your Excellency, this is a unique moment in history; Africa’s economy is growing faster than that of most Western economies. At the same time, we all know that there are serious concerns for food security globally and particularly on this continent. The BecA facility you are about to open today will deliver key elements to respond to the urgent demand for drastically increased agricultural productivity. It will provide practical hands-on experience in advanced biosciences to the next generation of African scientists. It will enable a wide range of African institutions, from research centres to universities to private-sector companies, to develop the technological solutions for today and tomorrow. We know there is a revolution going on in the biosciences worldwide. What has been lacking till now is effective grounding of this science in African realities. This will be done by Africans in Africa fully engaged in the global science community.’

Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki officially opened the BecA-Hub at ILRI on Friday 5 November. Read key highlights from the president’s speech on the following link: http://ilriclippings.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/kenya-president-mwai-kibaki-officially-opens-state-of-the-art-biosciences-facilities-at-ilris-nairobi-campus/

Listen to and watch the BecA official opening speeches on the following links:
Podcasts
Short videos

Canadian and British research investments pay off for Africa

Research is allowing African farmers to overcome old problems and exploit new opportunities. The debate is raging on as to how best Africa can set itself on the road to growth and renewal, and whether blanket debt relief for all African countries is the best solution. African leaders recognise that agriculture is Africa’s engine for growth, and that there is a need to take a long-term view and build science and technology capacity within Africa to help Africans solve Africa’s problems. Top African scientist and Harvard Professor, Calestous Juma, speaking to BBC yesterday (7 July) said: “If all the aid from Live 8 was spent on agricultural colleges rather than relief, Ethiopia would not be in difficulties today.” “Helping to build scientific expertise will do for Africa what the invention of the electric guitar did for Bob Geldof.” Dr Carlos Seré, Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), said “I would urge that there is greater emphasis on building science and technology capacity in Africa. Agricultural research in Africa is producing robust returns of 35% and changing the lives of millions of Africans. Money wisely invested in science – building expertise in Africa for African problems – will reap long-term benefits that will help millions of poor people in Africa secure better health, education, and livelihoods.” See below ILRI’s feature “Canadian and British Research Investments Pay Off for Africa” published in The Herald (Scotland), Friday 14 July 2005 (.p15).

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