Portait of an ISV fellow

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Stanley A. Plotkin

About Stanley Plotkin. Dr. Plotkin is Emeritus Professor of the University of Pennsylvania, and Adjunct Professor of the Johns Hopkins University. Until 1991, he was Professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, Professor of Virology at the Wistar Institute and at the same time, Director of Infectious Diseases and Senior Physician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He maintained laboratories at both CHOP and Wistar. In 1991, Dr. Plotkin left the University to join the vaccine manufacturer, Pasteur-Mérieux-Connaught (now called Sanofi Pasteur), where for seven years he was Medical and Scientific Director, based at Marnes-la-Coquette, outside Paris. He left France in 1998, and is now consultant to many vaccine manufacturers, biotechnology companies and non-profit research organizations as principal of Vaxconsult. He also continues to teach at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Plotkin attended New York University, where he received a B.A. degree, and then the State University of New York Medical School in Brooklyn, where he received an M.D. degree in 1956. His subsequent career included internship at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital under Fred Robbins, residency in pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the Hospital for Sick Children in London and three years in the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the Centers for Disease Control of the US Public Health Service. While in EIS in the 1950s he worked on the development of oral polio vaccine and on the efficacy of a vaccine against inhalation and cutaneous anthrax.

He has been chairman of both the Infectious Diseases Committee and the AIDS Task Force of the American Academy of Pediatrics, liaison member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and Chairman of the Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Research Committee of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Plotkin received the Bruce Medal in Preventive Medicine of the American College of Physicians, the Distinguished Physician Award of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, the Clinical Virology Award of the Pan American Society for Clinical Virology, the Richard Day Master Teacher in Pediatrics Award of the Alumni Association of New York Downstate Medical College, and the Marshall Award of the European Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases. In June 1998, he received the French Legion of Honor Medal; in June 2001, the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, in September 2006 the gold medal from the same hospital; the Sabin Gold Medal in May 2002, in September 2004 the Fleming (Bristol) Award of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, in May 2007 the medal of the Fondation Mérieux, in 2009 the Finland Award of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and the Hilleman Award of the American Society for Microbiology, and in 2013 the Career Achievement Award from the Association for Clincal and Translational Medicine, as well as the Caspar Wistar Medal of the Wistar Institute of Biological Research. In 2014 he received the Charles Mérieux Award of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and the Sheikh Hamdan (Dubai) Award for Medical Sciences. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2005, to the French Academy of Medicine in 2007, to the French Academy of Pharmacy in 2013, and to the Thai Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society in 2015. Dr. Plotkin is the Founder and a Fellow of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society. He is also a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, of the International Society for Vaccines, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Dr. Plotkin holds honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Rouen (France) and the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). He is on the board of the Rostropovich Foundation. Named lectures in his honor have been established at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting, at the International Advanced Vaccinology Course in Annecy, France, and at the DNA Vaccines Society. A professorship in his name was established at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. His bibliography includes over 800 articles and he has edited several books including the standard textbook on vaccines, now in its 7th edition and now titled “Plotkin's Vaccines.” In 2000, Plotkin proposed and helped organize an Advanced Course in Vaccinology at the Fondation Mérieux, now in its 19th year. In 2015, in the New England Journal of Medicine, he proposed an international fund for development of vaccines against emerging diseases, which now exists as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation. He developed the rubella vaccine now in standard use throughout the world, is codeveloper of the pentavalent rotavirus vaccine, and has worked extensively on the laboratory development and application of other vaccines including anthrax, oral polio, rabies, varicella, pertussis, Lyme disease and cytomegalovirus.