Margaret Liu Credit: photo: David Powers

In line with his philosophy of recruiting the brightest and the best, Bill Gates has hired expert vaccinologist Margaret Liu as Senior Advisor in Vaccinology to the Gates Foundation and medical advisor to the Global Fund for Vaccines.

The latter was launched in 1999 with a $750 million inaugural grant from the Gates Foundation, and is dedicated to providing existing and near-term vaccines for the world's underserved children.

Liu will devote 75% of her time to this work and, because she is also an acknowledged authority on gene therapy, will be employed for the remainder of the time as vice chairman of the Board and chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board at Strasbourg-based gene therapy company, Transgene, a job that she began last month.

Transgene's technology platform is based on gene therapy vectors such as vaccinia virus, adenovirus and synthetic vectors. The company has five products in clinical development to treat a variety of cancer indications.

Liu—who is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, Korea, and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Gene Therapy—left her position as vice president of Vaccine Research and Gene Therapy with vaccine manufacturer, Chiron, in January when the company changed its strategic direction in vaccine research and decreased its gene therapy efforts. Prior to that, she was Senior Director of Virus and Cell Biology at Merck & Co., and before that she was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School.

She says she took on the Gates role because she is “excited” about the impact that the Foundation is having on vaccine efforts: “They've really highlighted vaccines that need to be made for people that can least afford them. Not only those such as HIV, TB and malaria, but others that wouldn't command the attention or resources by any other route, such as guinea worm.”