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Renowned Thomas Jefferson University virologist Hilary Koprowski, M.D., has always given to his native Poland. In the 1960s, in the face of a polio outbreak, roughly 9 million doses of the live polio vaccine he created halted an epidemic in the country.

As the long-time director of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, which he helped establish as an international center for vaccine development and basic science, Dr. Koprowski trained some 30 scientists for two to three years at Wistar’s expense. All but one returned to work in Poland.

In the 1990s, Dr. Koprowski created a foundation intended to support “artisans” from other countries in a variety of fields to come to Poland for two weeks and stay with 15 selected young Polish university graduates, lecturing, and helping them develop career goals. His goal, he says, is to attempt to stop a brain drain of Polish talent from the country.

It’s only fitting that Dr. Koprowski, now professor of microbiology and immunology and director of the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories and the Center for Neurovirology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, has won the 2005 Andrzej Drawicz Prize given by the president of Poland. The award is given to “persons who contribute in an outstanding way to the cultivation of the Polish cultural heritage in the world, in the spirit of tolerance and respect for differences.”

“From the point of view of an award given by a country, this is extremely important,” Dr. Koprowski says. In some ways, the award might be comparable to the Presidential Medal of Honor in the United States, he notes. The Andrzej Drawicz Prize was established by the Semper Polonia Foundation in 1990. Andrzej Drawicz, after whom the prize was named, was a literary critic and an expert on Russian literature and eastern affairs. Candidates are nominated by ambassadors, representatives of the Polish diplomatic corps and members. Past winners of the Andrzej Drawicz Prize include, among others, British historian and writer Norman Davies, famous for his studies and publications on Europe, the United Kingdom and Poland, and Piotr Slonimski, a world renowned scientist specializing in yeast genetics.

Dr. Koprowski created the first vaccine against poliomyelitis, which was based on oral administration of a weakened poliovirus.  The first child received the vaccine in 1950 and during the next decade, the oral polio vaccine he developed was used extensively for immunization against polio in four continents.  His vaccine was the first used for mass immunization trials, which took place in Zaire (then the Belgian Congo), where 250,000 children were immunized in six weeks. 

Dr. Koprowski served as director of The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia for 35 years. While at Wistar, he and his colleagues developed a new type of rabies vaccine for both humans and animals. He has also done pioneering work in the development of monoclonal antibodies, which are effectively used for the detection of cancer antigens and immunotherapy of cancer. 

In the past decade Dr. Koprowski directed his efforts toward the development of biomedical products in plants.  He succeeded in producing rabies vaccine in spinach and complete antibodies directed against rabies and cancer antigen in tobacco.  Through cooperation with Polish scientists, it has been possible to conduct successful clinical trials with hepatitis B vaccine in lettuce.

He is a graduate of the Faculty of Medicine at Warsaw University.  A concert pianist, he also received degrees from the Warsaw Conservatory and the Santa Cecilia Conservatory of Music in Rome. 

“The pleasure of our life,” he says, “is in fulfilling our creative urge. That may be done by a well done experiment, composing a sonata, writing a poem – all this is the same. Every person in his own way has a creative urge.”