Don Francis

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Donald Pinkston Francis
Born (1942-10-24) October 24, 1942 (age 81)
Genentech, Inc.
VaxGen

Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases

Donald Pinkston Francis (born October 24, 1942) is an American

San Francisco, California
.

Early life

Francis was born October 24, 1942, in the

Marin County. His main interest was skiing, and his mother, father and grandfather were physicians. However, he was a poor student as a child, suffering from dyslexia. Francis has said that he gravitated towards science because he had such difficulty with subjects where fluent reading ability was needed.[citation needed
]

Francis completed his undergraduate studies at the

smallpox epidemic in Yugoslavia in 1972,[3] and the 1976 Ebola epidemic in Sudan. In addition, Francis was an early developer of the hepatitis B vaccine in the United States and China.[4]

Later work

Francis began his work on AIDS in 1981. He was one of the first scientists to suggest that AIDS was caused by an infectious agent.[5] As director of the CDC's AIDS Laboratory Activities, he worked closely with the Institut Pasteur[6] which isolated HIV.

At the time of his retirement from the CDC, he was the centers' AIDS Advisor to the State of California and Special Consultant to Mayor Art Agnos in San Francisco.[7] In the latter capacity he served as the Chair of the Mayor's HIV Task Force.

In 1993, Francis joined

Genentech, Inc., of South San Francisco to try to develop a vaccine for HIV. In 1995, Francis and fellow retro-virologist Dr. Robert Nowinski spun off Genentech's HIV vaccine unit after the company had disappointing results, and founded VaxGen, based in Brisbane, California, to continue working on vaccines. After the vaccine failed in clinical trials, Francis left VaxGen in 2004 to co-found Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, where he serves as executive director and principal investigator.[8]

And The Band Played On

In 1993,

HTLV (the human T-cell lymphotropic virus), who cuts off assistance when he hears that Francis has shared some experimental materials with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier (portrayed in the film by Nathalie Baye and Patrick Bauchau), the French researchers at the Pasteur Institute who were given the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the HIV virus.[9]

References

  1. ^ Martin, Richard, "Testing the First AIDS Vaccine", Wired Magazine, January 2003.
  2. ISBN 978-0520948891
    . Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  3. ISBN 978-0306452673
    . Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  4. ^ "Dr. Don Francis Biography". Archived from the original on 2013-10-20. Retrieved 2014-01-23.
  5. ISBN 978-0312374631
    .
  6. ^ In Their Own Words...NIH Researchers Recall the Early Years of AIDS, Transcript of Interview with Dr. James Curran, p. 6, February 2, 1997, Office of NIH History.
  7. ^ Stein, Mark A., "Panel Sounds Warning on AIDS in S.F.", "L.A. Times", January 11, 1990.
  8. ^ Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases
  9. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2008" (PDF). NobelPrize.org. Nobel Web AB. 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-05-02. Retrieved 2016-04-16.

Further reading

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