Stanley Plotkin is widely recognized as a leading authority in vaccinology, and is adviser to the chief executive of vaccine manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur in Lyons, France (see CV). Last month, he also took on his very first position on the board of directors for a company — at Dynavax Technologies in Berkeley, California (see CV).

The path to his success began when he joined the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. After his training, he angled for an assignment away from epidemiology in the anthrax laboratory at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although he was not particularly interested in anthrax, Plotkin says he took “a gamble” so that he could work with Hilary Koprowski, who created the first live polio vaccine.

It was an outbreak of inhalation anthrax in New Haven, Connecticut, that changed Plotkin's career. With his co-workers on holiday, Plotkin not only had to detail the clinical course and spread of the infection, but also had to develop a preventative vaccine. “By choosing something no one else wanted, anthrax, I was successful in doing what I hoped to do,” he says.

The success of working on a vaccine for a disease that others considered untouchable led Plotkin further away from epidemiology. He subsequently worked on vaccines against polio, varicella, rabies, rotavirus and rubella while at the Wistar Institute and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. But one vaccine has eluded him for 25 years: that against cytomegalovirus. The development of a vaccine against a chronic infection such as this presents difficulties not faced with other diseases, he notes. He calls the quest his hobby, but remains optimistic that he will see a licensed vaccine in his lifetime.

Working in both academia and industry has helped Plotkin to guide vaccines from basic research to the marketplace. Having worked as medical and scientific director for Pasteur Mérieux Connaught, Plotkin understands how vaccines are manufactured — often a perspective foreign to academics.

Plotkin advises young scientists eager to develop vaccines to consider working in industry. Despite the ongoing need for basic discoveries, he says that tighter safety and regulatory standards make it easier to develop vaccines in industry than in universities. But the most important thing students can do, he says, is seek the counsel of an adviser who will grant them all the responsibility they can handle.