Innovation Anthology #483:
In the spring of 2012, Dr. Lorne Babiuk received the Canada Gairdner Wightman Award for his outstanding contributions to science and society.
Today Dr. Babiuk is Vice President, Research at the University of Alberta. But 38 years of his scientific life were dedicated to virology and creating new vaccines at the University of Saskatchewan.
DR. LORNE BABIUK: The first vaccine that I helped develop was against rotovirus, which is a disease that infects every mammal which causes scour and diarrhea in calves and kills quite a large number of animals each year. You could see this virus in diarrhea of animals and children but nobody could ever grow the virus. So I was able identify using some tricks a way to be able to grow the virus. And as a result of that, we could develop rapid diagnostic tests and then we developed a vaccine, first in calves and then the system we used was then used to develop a vaccine against children. The disease would kill about 500,000 children every year.
Dr. Babiuk also helped develop the vaccine against e.coli 0157, the microorganism in water that killed people in Walkerton.
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I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Program Date: 2012-07-03