Albert Lasker
Clinical Medical Research Award

Award Presentation by Joseph Goldstein

This year's Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Research is awarded to four scientists—Porter Anderson, David Smith, John Robbins, and Rachel Schneerson, who developed the vaccine that protects infants from a deadly bacterium called type b Hemophilus influenza or Hib. Hib causes meningitis, which leads to mental retardation, deafness, and even death in young children. Before the vaccine became available in the late 1980s, 13,000 children each year in the U.S. developed severe Hib meningitis. Working as two separate teams over the past 40 years, Drs. Anderson and Smith and Drs. Robbins and Schneerson independently discovered that the key to an effective Hib vaccine was the development of a polysaccharide-protein conjugate in which the polysaccharide capsule of the Hib bacterium is chemically bound to a protein antigen. Both groups carried the vaccine development all the way from initial discovery to the successful marketing of a medical product.

The Hib vaccine has reduced the incidence of Hib meningitis by 98 percent in less than 10 years—a truly remarkable achievement in the history of medical science. No other vaccine has ever shown such a rapid and dramatic effect in virtually eliminating a fatal disease. The story of our four awardees constitutes a wonderful chapter in the history of medicine—comparable to the eradication of smallpox by Edward Jenner, polio by Salk and Sabin, and mumps and measles by Maurice Hilleman.