Keynote Speakers

Stanley Plotkin, MD

Emeritus Professor

Stanley Alan Plotkin, MD began his research career at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia in the 1960s where he studied the rubella virus.  Dr. Plotkin successfully created RA27/3, a weakened strain of the rubella virus, which he then used to develop a rubella vaccine. His rubella vaccine has prevented birth defects due to congenital rubella in developing fetuses and newborns.

In the 19060s, Dr. Plotkin collaborated with Hilary Koprowski and Tadeusz Wiktor at the Wistar Institute to create a vaccine for rabies, which became licensed for public use beginning in 1980. He has also been involved in other vaccine development programs including anthrax, oral polio, varicella, and cytomegalovirus.  Dr. Plotkin has balanced his study of viruses and vaccines with his medical career. He  taught pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania where he remained a professor until 1991. In 1972, Plotkin became the director of the Infectious Disease Department as well as a Senior Physician in Pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where he remained for decades to follow. Plotkin also became a professor of virology at the Wistar Institute in 1974. 

In 1991, Dr. Plotkin left the University to join the vaccine manufacturer, Pasteur-Mérieux-Connaught, where for seven years he was Medical and Scientific Director, based at Marnes-la-Coquette, now known as Sanofi Pasteur. Dr. Plotkin’s bibliography includes nearly 700 articles and he has edited several books including the standard textbook on vaccines, now in its 5th edition. He is a consultant to vaccine manufacturers, biotechnology companies, and non-profit research organizations as principal of Vaxconsult, LLC.

Dr. Plotkin has been a tireless advocate for the protection of humans, and children in particular, from preventable infectious diseases. His lifetime of work on vaccines has led to profound reductions in both morbidity and mortality not only in the United States, but throughout the world.

Drew Weissman, MD, PhD

Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research

Drew Weissman, M.D., Ph.D. is a professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He received his graduate degrees from Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Weissman, in collaboration with Dr. Katalin Karikó, discovered the ability of modified nucleosides in RNA to suppress activation of innate immune sensors and increase the translation of mRNA containing certain modified nucleosides. The nucleoside-modified mRNA-lipid nanoparticle vaccine platform Dr. Weissman’s lab created is used in the first 2 approved COVID-19 vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. They continue to develop other vaccines that induce potent antibody and T cell responses with mRNA–based vaccines. Dr. Weissman’s lab also develops methods to replace genetically deficient proteins, edit the genome, and specifically target cells and organs with mRNA-LNPs, including lung, heart, brain, CD4+ cells, all T cells, and bone marrow stem cells.