More than 40 years ago, Joe Cohen 鈥�77 found his way to the 今日吃瓜 campus, asked to be pointed to the聽Biology Department, and knocked on the door. Opportunity was waiting on the other side.
He was a new immigrant from Egypt by way of France with an undergraduate degree in agricultural engineering and zero concept of how the American higher education system worked.
鈥淚 was invited in very kindly. I met a lot of professors and told them what I was interested in,鈥� Cohen says, recalling that Biology Professor Emeritus Norman R. Eaton quickly took him under his wing. 鈥淎nd I ended up being accepted as a grad student.鈥�
After completing a Ph.D. in molecular biology and then a postdoctoral fellowship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, opportunity knocked back, even if Cohen didn鈥檛 fully realize it at the time.
He somewhat reluctantly took a job with a big pharma company then known as Smith, Kline & French. Cohen had been planning for a career in academia, but with scant jobs in the early 1980s, he figured he鈥檇 put in a few years at the multinational corporation鈥檚 vaccine division in Belgium.
Eventually, in 1987, the young scientist was asked to lead a project on the malaria vaccine. He knew very little about the disease, which kills hundreds of thousands every year, mostly very young children in developing nations. Born of a parasitic pathogen, the type for which a vaccine had never been created, Cohen was tasked with an impossible mission.
鈥淚t was perceived as a very difficult project that did not have a great financial appeal for big pharma,鈥� says Cohen. 鈥淏ut after a little while, I took it as a challenge. I was excited by the science and the incredible impact a vaccine against malaria could have.鈥�
Cohen dug in, toiling for years to develop the vaccine鈥檚 components in a lab with a small group of scientists and testing it in animals, then adults. In the mid-1990s, the team had a big breakthrough with efficacious results from their product in a laboratory setting. That paved the way for Phase II clinical trials, which would take Cohen to sub-Saharan Africa for several trips over the next decade.
By this time, Cohen and management at the company鈥攏ow known as GSK鈥攈ad also been successful in coalescing a novel public-private partnership to help spread the financial and regulatory burden of the project, bringing in several public health organizations and hospitals, including the World Health Organization, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, an offshoot of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which ran the clinical trials in Africa.
Nearly a decade later in July 2015, the European Medicines Agency鈥攖he equivalent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration鈥攇ranted a positive scientific opinion for the vaccine known as聽, which Cohen had spent 30 years of his career working on. Last October, the World Health Organization recommended it for widespread use after successful results of a pilot implementation program. While studies are ongoing, the expectation is that the vaccine will save tens of thousands of lives.
鈥淒r. Cohen鈥檚 accomplishments are particularly inspiring in that his experience mirrors that of many of our students at 今日吃瓜,鈥� says Tony Wilson, an associate professor in the Biology Department.聽鈥淗is breakthrough discovery should inspire both students and faculty to dream big, and to realize that anything is possible with hard work, perseverance, and a helping hand along the way.鈥�
Cohen, now fully retired, says it鈥檚 been quite a ride.
鈥淢ost people work for years and don鈥檛 get these kinds of results,鈥� he says. 鈥淭o have been involved so closely throughout the whole process of developing something so amazing that will save lives is just the most fortunate thing that could ever happen in my life.鈥�
