 | This biographical article is written like a résumé .(October 2021) |
Charles Joel Arntzen (born 1941) [1] is a plant molecular biologist. [1] His major contributions are in the field of "plant molecular biology and protein engineering, as well as the utilization of plant biotechnology for enhancement of food quality and value, for expression of pharmacological products in transgenic plants, and for overcoming health and agricultural constraints in the developing world." [2]
In 2017, Charles Arntzen retired from Arizona State University as an emeritus professor. [3] He had been appointed to the Florence Ely Nelson Presidential Endowed Chair at ASU in Tempe in 2000. [2] [4] He was the Founding Director [5] [3] [6] [7] of the Biodesign Institute (previously identified as the Arizona Biomedical Institute) [3] from 2001-2003, and served as the co-director of the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology with Processor Roy Curtiss until 2007. [5] [8] [7] Prior to joining ASU, Arntzen served as president and CEO of Boyce Thompson Institute - a not-for-profit corporation affiliated with Cornell University. [7] [9] [4] Earlier administrative experience included service as director of research at the Dupont Company in Wilmington, Delaware. [6] [4]
He had also been the deputy chancellor for agriculture; dean, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; and director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in the Texas A&M University System. While at TAMU he led the development of the Institute of Biosciences Technology in the Texas Medical Center, Houston. [8] [4] Arntzen began his academic career in 1969 at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and jointly held an appointment as a scientist in the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). [10] In 1980 he moved to Michigan State University to become the director of MSU's Department of Energy Plant Research Laboratory (PRL), a position he held until being recruited to join the DuPont Company. [7] [11]
Throughout his career, Arntzen participated in and was funded by multiple international projects, including research in India, Egypt, Australia, China, Japan, Israel and Europe. In 1973-1974 and also in 1976 he held an appointment in the Laboratoire de Photosynthèse du CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. [10] In 1981 he served as a fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics of the Australian National University, Canberra, and in 1983 he was an Academia Sinica Visiting Scientist in Beijing and other locations in China. [10] He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophiae honoris causa. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2008. [11] [12]
Arntzen was elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1983. [13] He is also a foreign fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India. [1] He is a Fellow of The American Association for the Advancement of Science and received the Award for Superior Service from the USDA for international project leadership in India. [7] [4] He was a member of the executive committee of the board of governors of The University of Chicago for Argonne National Laboratory and served as chairperson of their science and technology advisory committee. [14] He served as chairman of the National Biotechnology Policy Board of the National Institutes of Health, [6] [4] as chairman of the National Research Council's Committee on Biobased Industrial Products [6] and on the National Research Council's Committee on Space Biology and Medicine. [14] Arntzen served for eight years on the editorial board of SCIENCE. [4] [6] He also served as a distinguished advisor on the Council for Biotechnology [6] and was on the board of directors of the National Center for Genome Resources. [15]
In 2001 Arntzen was appointed as a member of President George W. Bush's Presidential Council of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST), [3] [6] [7] and in 2004 received a presidential appointment to serve on the National Nanotechnology Oversight Board; both of these appointments continued through the Bush presidency. [4]
Arntzen's research focus spans plant cell-molecular biology and protein engineering. He was an early proponent of using plant biotechnology to enhance food quality and value, to express pharmacologically active products in plants, and to overcome health and agricultural constraints in the developing world. He is a pioneer in the development of plant-based vaccines for human disease prevention with special emphasis on needs of poor countries and disease prevention in animal agriculture. [9] [6] [16] [17] After 2001, this research was extended to the creation of effective vaccines and therapeutics to reduce the threats of biowarfare agents. [16] Research initiated at ASU and funded by the US Army in 2002 focused on use of tobacco to bio-manufacture vaccines and monoclonal antibodies to prevent for treat disease caused by potential biological warfare agents. [16] [18] In 2011, he and his team at the Biodesign Institute were developing a vaccine for the Ebola virus using mice. [19] [20] [21] An outcome of this research was the creation of ZMapp, a therapeutic used to treat Ebola patients. [17] [16] ZMapp remains as the leading candidate therapeutic for this disease. [16] Fast Company chose him as the Most Creative Person in Business in 2015 for his work on fighting Ebola with tobacco-made therapeutics. [17] [22]
In addition to his employment with DuPont, Arntzen's private sector service includes past membership on the Board of Directors of DeKalb Genetics Corporation (prior to sale to Monsanto) [7] [4] and Board of Directors for Axis Genetics in Cambridge, UK. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Advanced BioNutrition Corporation. [6] [7] [4] He is an inventor on multiple U.S. and international patents and was named a Fellow in the U.S. National Academy of Inventors in 2015. [5]
Arizona State University is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is now one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the United States. It was one of about 180 "normal schools" founded in the late 19th century to train teachers for the rapidly growing public common schools. Some closed, but most steadily expanded their role and became state colleges in the early 20th century, then state universities in the late 20th century.
Sir Peter Karel, Baron Piot, is a Belgian-British microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS.
The Texas A&M Institute of Biosciences and Technology (IBT), a component of Texas A&M Health, and The Texas A&M University System, is located in the world's largest medical center, the Texas Medical Center, in Houston, Texas. The institute provides a bridge between Texas A&M University System scientists and other institutions' researchers working in the Texas Medical Center and the biomedical and biotechnology research community in Houston. It emphasizes collaboration between member scientists and others working in all the fields of the biosciences and biotechnology. IBT encourages its scientists to transfer discoveries made in their laboratories to the clinic and marketplace.
The Biodesign Institute is a major research center known for nature-inspired solutions to global health, sustainability, and security challenges located on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University. The institute is organized into a growing number of collaborative research centers and laboratories staffed by scientists in diverse disciplines. It is currently led by Executive Director Dr. Joshua LaBaer, a personalized diagnostics researcher.
George Henry Poste, CBE FRS, is a former Director of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University.
Lorne Allan Babiuk, is a Canadian scientist specializing in immunology, pathogenesis, virology, molecular virology, and vaccinology. He is the Vice-President of Research at the University of Alberta and the former Director of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr Babiuk holds the Canada Research Chair in Vaccinology and Biotechnology and is Chair of the Board for Pan-Provincial Vaccine Enterprise (PREVENT), a vaccine development company.
Carlos Castillo-Chavez is a Mexican-American mathematician who was Regents Professor and Joaquín Bustoz Jr. Professor of Mathematical Biology at Arizona State University. Castillo-Chavez was founder and the Executive Director of the Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute (MTBI) and the Institute for Strengthening the Understanding of Mathematics and Science. For 2019, Castillo-Chavez was Provost Visiting Professor in the Applied Mathematics Division and Data Science Initiative at Brown University. Castillo-Chavez retired from Arizona State University at the end of spring 2020.
The Vaccine Research Center (VRC), is an intramural division of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The mission of the VRC is to discover and develop both vaccines and antibody-based products that target infectious diseases.
Brett P. Giroir is an American pediatrician. He was formerly the U.S. assistant secretary for health, a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and an acting Food and Drug Administration commissioner.
Sir Jeremy James Farrar is a British medical researcher who has served as Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization since 2023. He was previously the director of The Wellcome Trust from 2013 to 2023 and a professor of tropical medicine at the University of Oxford.
ZMapp is an experimental biopharmaceutical drug comprising three chimeric monoclonal antibodies under development as a treatment for Ebola virus disease. Two of the three components were originally developed at the Public Health Agency of Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory (NML), and the third at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases; the cocktail was optimized by Gary Kobinger, a research scientist at the NML and underwent further development under license by Mapp Biopharmaceutical. ZMapp was first used on humans during the Western African Ebola virus epidemic, having only been previously tested on animals and not yet subjected to a randomized controlled trial. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) ran a clinical trial starting in January 2015 with subjects from Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia aiming to enroll 200 people, but the epidemic waned and the trial closed early, leaving it too statistically underpowered to give a meaningful result about whether ZMapp worked.
Ebola vaccines are vaccines either approved or in development to prevent Ebola. As of 2022, there are only vaccines against the Zaire ebolavirus. The first vaccine to be approved in the United States was rVSV-ZEBOV in December 2019. It had been used extensively in the Kivu Ebola epidemic under a compassionate use protocol. During the early 21st century, several vaccine candidates displayed efficacy to protect nonhuman primates against lethal infection.
Balram Bhargava is an Indian physician scientist, cardiologist, medical educationist, and innovator. He is currently serving as the Chief of Cardiothoracic Centre, AIIMS. He is the former Director General at the Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi and secretary of the Department of Health Research; a division under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.
There is a cure for the Ebola virus disease that is currently approved for market the US government has inventory in the Strategic National Stockpile. For past and current Ebola epidemics, treatment has been primarily supportive in nature.
Bruce E. Rittmann is Regents' Professor of Environmental Engineering and Director of the Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology at the Biodesign Institute of Arizona State University. He was also elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 for pioneering the development of biofilm fundamentals and contributing to their widespread use in the cleanup of contaminated waters, soils, and ecosystems.
Tilak Raj Sharma is an Indian plant biologist, the Deputy Director General (CS) of ICAR and former executive director and chief executive officer of the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI), and Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing (CIAB) respectively, both autonomous institutes under the Department of Biotechnology. Known for his studies in the fields of genomics and plant disease resistance, Sharma is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences in 2007.
Rachel Kerina Chikwamba is a Zimbabwean plant geneticist born in 1967. She is in the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Group Executive: Strategic Alliances and Communication. She is an active member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.
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Gary P. Kobinger is a Canadian immunologist and virologist who is currently the director at the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas. He has held previous professorships at Université Laval, the University of Manitoba, and the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, he was the chief of the Special Pathogens Unit at the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, for eight years. Kobinger is known for his critical role in the development of both an effective Ebola vaccine and treatment. His work focuses on the development and evaluation of new vaccine platforms and immunological treatments against emerging and re-emerging viruses that are dangerous to human health.
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