Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto presents

 The FitzGerald Seminar Series

Invasive Meningococcal Disease in Ontario: Disease Overview and Prevention  

Date:               Monday, November 28^th, 2011

Time:              4:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Location:        MaRS Discovery District, 101 College Street

Auditorium located on the lower concourse

Refreshments:  Full Afternoon Tea Service will be offered from 4:00 – 4:30 pm

Agenda:

Dr. David Fisman, MD, MPH                                                                4:30 - 4:40pm

Founder of the FitzGerald Seminar Series and Associate Professor

Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto

Chairperson of Event and Introduction of Presenters

Presenters:

Dr. Ronald Gold, MD, M.P.H.                                                               4:40 – 5:00pm

Professor of Pediatrics (Retired) and Former Head of Division of Infectious Disease

The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario

 “An Overview of the Clinical Presentation of Meningococcal Meningitis”

Dr. Shelley Deeks, MD, MHSc, FRCPC, FFAFPM                             5:00 – 5:30pm

Medical Epidemiologist, Surveillance and Epidemiology, PHO

“Invasive meningococcal disease in Ontario – changing trends”

Dr. Rino Rappuoli, Ph.D.                                                                     5:30 – 6:10pm

Global Head, Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics Research

“Meningococcus B - A Reverse Vaccinology Approach to Vaccine Development”

Biographies of Presenters:

Presenter: Dr. Ronald Gold

Dr. Ronald Gold was Head of the Division of Infectious Disease at the Hospital for Sick Children and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto from 1979 to 1992. He received his BA (1957) and MD (1962) and MPH (1967) from Harvard University. Dr. Gold’s research has focused primarily on the safety and immunogenicity of vaccines. He served on many advisory committees including the National Advisory Committee on Immunization; Infectious Diseases and Immunization Committee of the Canadian Paediatric Society; Immunization Monitoring Program, Active [IMPACT] of Canadian Paediatric Society; Committee on Infectious Diseases of American Academy of Pediatrics; and the Immunization Subcommittee of the Ontario Infectious Disease Advisory Committee. Since his retirement in 1996 he has been a Senior Medical Advisor and a member of the Board of Directors of the Meningitis Research Foundation of Canada since its inception.

Presenter: Dr. Shelley Deeks

Dr. Shelley Deeks is the Associate Director of Surveillance and Epidemiology at Public Health Ontario and an Assistant Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto.  She is Chair of the World Health Organization’s Immunization Practices Advisory Committee and of the Ontario HPV Prevention Evaluation Committee and is the Scientific Lead for Ontario’s Provincial Infectious Disease Advisory Committee on Immunization. Dr. Deeks holds fellowships in Public Health at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine.  Her current areas of focus are vaccines, vaccine program evaluation and vaccine preventable disease (VPD) outbreak management and response. 

Presenter: Dr. Rino Rappuoli

Rino Rappuoli is Global Head of Vaccines Research at Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, based in Siena, Italy. He earned his PhD in Biological Sciences at the University of Siena and has served as a visiting scientist at Rockefeller University in New York and Harvard Medical School in Boston. He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, the European Molecular Biology Organization and was awarded the Gold Medal by the Italian President in 2005. In 2009, he received the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal for his work in the field of reverse vaccinology and in 2010 the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Institute of Human Virology in Maryland. He introduced several novel scientific concepts: genetic detoxification, 1987; cellular microbiology, 1996; reverse vaccinology, 2000; and pangenome, 2005. He characterized a molecule, CRM197, that today is the most widely used carrier for vaccines against H. influenzae, N. meningitidis and pneumococcus vaccines, and is used multiple times to vaccinate most children of the globe. Then he developed a vaccine against pertussis by engineering B. pertussis to produce a non toxic pertussis toxin antigen. Later he developed the first conjugate vaccine against meningococcus C that eliminated the disease in the UK in 2000. He pioneered the use of genomic information for vaccine development (reverse vaccinology). The first genome-derived vaccine against meningococcus B is now in Phase III clinical trials, several others are in earlier stages of development. Finally, in 1997 he obtained the regulatory approval for MF59, the first vaccine adjuvant approved for human use after the approval of aluminium salts in the 1920s. MF59 is now being used in many other experimental vaccines, the most advanced of which is a vaccine against pandemic influenza.

The FitzGerald Seminar Series is supported by an unrestricted educational grant from Novartis Canada