The Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson to Honor Dr. Koprowski December 7

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In an environment of flat federal spending on science, renowned Thomas Jefferson University virologist Hilary Koprowski, M.D., continues to amaze. Last month, Dr. Koprowski – the first scientist to develop the oral polio vaccine – was honored by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, M.D., for 50 years of continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health.

On December 7, the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson in Philadelphia will honor and celebrate Dr. Koprowski and his lifetime of achievements with a black-tie festschrift at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel at 13th and Market Streets.

Tributes to Dr. Koprowski will be made by several science luminaries, including University of California, San Francisco neurobiologist Stanley Prusiner, M.D., who received the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the disease-causing protein prion; former University of Pennsylvania and Aventis Pasteur vaccinologist Stanley Plotkin, M.D., who developed the current vaccine against the rotavirus; HIV co-discoverer Robert Gallo, M.D., director of the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland; former Jefferson and Wistar Institute colleague Carlo Croce, M.D., director of the Human Cancer Genetics Program at Ohio State University and former director of the Kimmel Cancer Center; and Donald Gilden, M.D., Chair of Neurology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

In his 40-plus years in Philadelphia at the Wistar Institute and Jefferson, Dr. Koprowski has helped elevate the city’s growing reputation as a mecca for science, medicine and research. A member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Koprowski developed the current rabies vaccine for humans and pioneered the development of monoclonal antibodies against cancer. He currently is professor in the Department of Cancer biology at Jefferson Medical College and director of Jefferson’s Center for Neurovirology and the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories.

The consummate Renaissance man, Dr. Koprowski is a concert pianist who writes music in his spare time – that is, when he’s not traveling to international conferences or being honored by some foreign nation for his myriad scientific accomplishments. Or busy pursuing his latest scientific cause: Plant-based vaccines against avian flu, smallpox and rabies.  

“The Kimmel Cancer Center and Jefferson are tremendously proud of Dr. Koprowski's accomplishments,” says Richard Pestell, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson. “Dr. Koprowski is one of the true giants in the field, an individual whose original thinking has changed the globe to benefit mankind in a remarkable way.”