Penny Heaton

Last updated
Penny M. Heaton
Alma mater University of Louisville School of Medicine
Scientific career
Institutions Johnson & Johnson
Novavax
Novartis
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Merck & Co
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Penny M. Heaton is an American physician who is the Global Therapeutics Lead for Vaccines at Johnson & Johnson. She previously worked at Novavax, Novartis and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She was included by Stat News on their definitive list of leaders in the life sciences in 2022.

Contents

Early life and education

Heaton has said that she was inspired to work on vaccine development after hearing her father suffered from tuberculosis before she was born. [1] She has credited her high school science teachers with teaching her the importance of blind controlled trials. [1] She was an undergraduate and medical student at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. She remained there as a medical resident in pediatrics. [2] She worked as a services officer for Epidemic Intelligence at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studying food-borne viruses in infants born to HIV positive mothers. She went on to work in Kenya, where she investigated the roll-out of vaccines in impoverished populations in Kisumu. [2]

Career

On returning to the United States, Heaton joined Merck & Co. Under her leadership the foundation developed the vaccine for rotavirus and delivered the Rotavirus Safety and Efficacy Trials. [3] [4] The vaccine was recommended by the World Health Organization for all infants around the world, and was predicted to save almost two million lives over the course of ten years. [5]

Heaton was made Global Head of Vaccine Research Clusters at Novartis where she worked on maternal immunization, with a particular focus on Group B streptococcal infection. She worked on vaccines against Meningococcal meningitis, including Bexsero and Men.[ citation needed ]

After 3 years at Novartis, Heaton joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as Director of Vaccine Development [2] and focssed on developing vaccines for diseases that impact the world's most vulnerable communities.

Heaton was made chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Medical Research Institute in 2017. [6] [7] She was recruited as global lead for vaccines at Johnson & Johnson in 2021. [8]

Awards and honors

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<i>Rotavirus</i> Specific genus of RNA viruses

Rotaviruses are the most common cause of diarrhoeal disease among infants and young children. Nearly every child in the world is infected with a rotavirus at least once by the age of five. Immunity develops with each infection, so subsequent infections are less severe. Adults are rarely affected. Rotavirus is a genus of double-stranded RNA viruses in the family Reoviridae. There are nine species of the genus, referred to as A, B, C, D, F, G, H, I and J. Rotavirus A is the most common species, and these rotaviruses cause more than 90% of rotavirus infections in humans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gastroenteritis</span> Inflammation of the stomach and small intestine

Gastroenteritis, also known as infectious diarrhea or simply as gastro, is an inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract including the stomach and intestine. Symptoms may include diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Fever, lack of energy, and dehydration may also occur. This typically lasts less than two weeks. Although it is not related to influenza, in the U.S. and U.K., it is sometimes called the "stomach flu".

The rotavirus vaccine is a vaccine used to protect against rotavirus infections, which are the leading cause of severe diarrhea among young children. The vaccines prevent 15–34% of severe diarrhea in the developing world and 37–96% of the risk of death among young children due to severe diarrhea. Immunizing babies decreases rates of disease among older people and those who have not been immunized.

A Trypanosomiasis vaccine is a vaccine against trypanosomiasis. No effective vaccine currently exists, but development of a vaccine is the subject of current research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katherine O'Brien</span> Canadian-born pediatric physician (born 1963)

Katherine "Kate" L. O'Brien is a Canadian American pediatric infectious disease physician, epidemiologist, and vaccinologist who specializes in the areas of pneumococcal epidemiology, pneumococcal vaccine trials and impact studies, and surveillance for pneumococcal disease. She is also known as an expert in infectious diseases in American Indian populations. O’Brien is currently the Director of the World Health Organization's Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals.

The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) is a non-profit, autonomous international organization established with the mandate of making vaccines accessible and affordable for all. Collaborating closely with the global scientific community, public health entities, governments, and industry stakeholders, IVI engages in every facet of the vaccine spectrum. This includes pioneering new vaccine designs in laboratories, advancing vaccine development and assessment in real-world settings, and facilitating the sustainable integration of vaccines in regions where they are most urgently required.

The London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases was a collaborative disease eradication programme launched on 30 January 2012 in London. It was inspired by the World Health Organization roadmap to eradicate or prevent transmission for neglected tropical diseases by the year 2020. Officials from WHO, the World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's 13 leading pharmaceutical companies, and government representatives from US, UK, United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mozambique and Tanzania participated in a joint meeting at the Royal College of Physicians to launch this project. The meeting was spearheaded by Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO, and Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foundation for the National Institutes of Health</span>

The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) is a not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) charitable organization established by the US Congress in 1990. Located in North Bethesda, MD, the FNIH raises private-sector funds, and creates and manages alliances with public and private institutions in support of the mission of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The Global Health Innovative Technology Fund, headquartered in Japan, is an international public-private partnership between the Government of Japan, 16 pharmaceutical and diagnostics companies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and United Nations Development Programme. It funds scientific research and development for anti-infectives and diagnostics for diseases that primarily affect the developing world. Bill Gates has noted that "GHIT draws on the immense innovation capacity of Japan’s pharmaceutical companies, universities and research institutions to accelerate the creation of new vaccines, drugs and diagnostic tools for global health." Margaret Chan, former Director-General of the World Health Organization, said: "The GHIT Fund has stepped in to provide that incentive in a pioneering model of partnership that brings Japanese innovation, investment and leadership to the global fight against infectious disease."

Gagandeep Kang FRS is an Indian microbiologist and virologist who has been leading the work on enteric diseases, diarrheal infections and disease surveillance at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations</span> Public-private organization for vaccine development

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is a foundation that takes donations from public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations, to finance independent research projects to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EID).

Margaret A. Liu is a physician and researcher studying gene expression, immune responses, and vaccines. From 2015 to 2017, Liu served as president of the International Society of Vaccines. She is currently a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a foreign adjunct professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Since June 7, 2017, she has been a director of Ipsen S.A. in France.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute is a non-profit biotechnology organization founded with the aim of bringing technologies and strategies to bear on the main health problems of the poor in low-income countries. The Gates MRI was organized as a subsidiary of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who funded it with a $273 million 4-year grant.

Melita Alison Gordon is a gastroenterologist who works on invasive gut pathogens and tropical gastrointestinal disease. She leads the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust Salmonella and Enterics Group. Gordon was awarded the British Society of Gastroenterology Sir Francis Avery Jones Research Medal in 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anita Zaidi</span> Pakistani physician

Anita Kaniz Mehdi Zaidi is a Pakistani physician. She is the President of the Gender Equality Division and Director of Vaccine Development, Global Health Surveillance, Diarrhea and Enteric Diseases at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She has previously served as Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health at the Aga Khan University.

Yvonne "Bonnie" Maldonado is an American physician, pediatrician, and Professor of Pediatrics and of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University, with a focus on Infectious Diseases. She founded Stanford's pediatric HIV Clinic and now serves as Stanford University School of Medicine's Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Diversity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shabir Madhi</span> South African physician and professor

Shabir Ahmed Madhi, is a South African physician who is professor of vaccinology and director of the South African Medical Research Council Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, and National Research Foundation/Department of Science and Technology Research Chair in Vaccine Preventable Diseases. In January 2021, he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand.

The Kigali Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases is a global health project that aims to mobilise political and financial resources for the control and eradication of infectious diseases, the so-called neglected tropical diseases due to different parasitic infections. Launched by the Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases on 27 January 2022, it was the culmination and join commitment declared at the Kigali Summit on Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) hosted by the Government of Rwanda at its capital city Kigali on 23 June 2022.

Trudy Virginia Noller Murphy is an American pediatric infectious diseases physician, public health epidemiologist and vaccinologist. During the 1980s and 1990s, she conducted research at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas on three bacterial pathogens: Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus), and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Murphy's studies advanced understanding of how these organisms spread within communities, particularly among children attending day care centers. Her seminal work on Hib vaccines elucidated the effects of introduction of new Hib vaccines on both bacterial carriage and control of invasive Hib disease. Murphy subsequently joined the National Immunization Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where she led multi-disciplinary teams in the Divisions of Epidemiology and Surveillance and The Viral Hepatitis Division. Among her most influential work at CDC was on Rotashield™, which was a newly licensed vaccine designed to prevent severe diarrheal disease caused by rotavirus. Murphy and her colleagues uncovered that the vaccine increased the risk of acute bowel obstruction (intussusception). This finding prompted suspension of the national recommendation to vaccinate children with Rotashield, and led the manufacturer to withdraw the vaccine from the market. For this work Murphy received the United States Department of Health and Human Services Secretary's Award for Distinguished Service in 2000, and the publication describing this work was recognized in 2002 by the Charles C. Shepard Science Award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Trevor Mundel is a South African doctor and scientist and the president of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Global Health Program. He is known for his role in the launch of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

References