Dr. Rip Ballou
Deputy Director for Vaccines, Infectious Diseases Development
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
United States of America
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W. Ripley Ballou, MD has been involved in malaria vaccine
development for more than two decades. Trained in Internal Medicine and
Infectious Diseases, he began his work in tropical diseases at the Walter Reed
Army Institute of Research in the early 1980s and became part of the team to
develop and test the world’s first subunit vaccine against Plasmodium
falciparum. As both the lead investigator and volunteer in a malaria challenge
trial of this vaccine, he learned first-hand the impact that malaria can
deliver. He subsequently dedicated his career to the discovery and development
of a vaccine that could truly have an important impact on the disease. As a key
member and eventually leader of the Army’s malaria vaccine research team, he
oversaw the development and testing of more than a dozen vaccine candidates
that led, in collaboration with scientists at GlaxoSmithKline, to the creation
of RTS,S, now considered the world’s most advanced malaria vaccine. Based upon
a virus-like particle that incorporated the circumsporozoite protein from
malaria with the hepatitis B surface antigen, and formulated in a novel
adjuvant system that induced strong antibody and T cell responses against the
parasite, the RTS,S vaccine was able to completely protect 6 of 7 volunteers in
its first malaria challenge trial. Shortly before retiring from the Army in
1999, he submitted a grant application to the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation that led to the creation of the Malaria Vaccine Inititiative at
PATH, and which now oversees the pediatric clinical development program in
subSaharan Africa for RTS,S. He spent the next 8 years in the vaccine industry,
including 5 years at Glaxosmithkline Biologicals in Belgium where he was
responsible for their clinical development programs for malaria, TB, HIV,
seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccines. In April 2008, he left GSK to join
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where he serves as the Deputy Director
for Vaccines, Infectious Diseases Development in the Global Health Division. He
is an author on more than 150 scientific publications in the field of vaccine
development and infectious diseases.
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