Replacing Lorne Babiuk is a little like curling against the skip that beat the best team in the league, says the incoming director of the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization.
Andy Potter is the long-time curling enthusiast and vaccine researcher who will tackle that challenge in July when Babiuk moves to a new job at the University of Alberta.
“It’s extremely daunting,” he said.
Within years, VIDO will add the International Vaccine Centre, or InterVac, and within weeks it will begin to collaborate with the university’s new school of public health.
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The son of an RCMP officer, Potter lived in a number of Canadian communities before attending Carleton University in Ottawa. He completed his PhD in New Zealand, where he met his Philippine born wife. They have two children, both students at the U of S.
Potter worked in plant and animal biotechnology in the Philippines and for Health Canada before Babiuk recruited him for VIDO in 1985.
He began working in respiratory vaccines for cattle, the first time he had been involved with livestock. Those experiences shaped his current work and helped him to learn to work with a team.
“You get more bang for your buck when working together,” he said. “You share in the work and in the rewards that come of the work.”
Potter said VIDO has embraced that concept to help it develop vaccines. Thirty percent of its work is devoted to human vaccines, with the rest created for livestock.
He plans to largely stay the course Babiuk set.
“VIDO will continue to work on what we’re good at,” he said.
The role vaccines play in public health hits home for Potter, who suffered through measles and mumps and had a neighbour afflicted with polio.
“People don’t go through that today,” he said.
Tough road ahead
The introduction of InterVac, which is expected to be complete by 2010, will allow the organization “to move on to the tough ones.”
“Without InterVac we couldn’t take it to the logical conclusion,” he said. “We can only take it part way.”
He said VIDO can work with the proteins that it thinks would be good vaccine components and can make prototype vaccines, but has no way to test whether they work until InterVac is completed.
VIDO has developed seven vaccines for livestock, which have made a $500 million impact in the Western Canada economy, he added.
“It’s incredible to get a return like that.”
VIDO is also involved in humanitarian work with Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ foundation by improving vaccines for newborns in the developing world.
In the future, it will link up with the new school of public health, providing high level training for graduate students in human and animal health.
Potter said VIDO receives valuable input, support and direction from the VIDO advisory board, chaired by Saskatoon livestock producer Brian Perkins.
Perkins said Potter’s history with the organization and international reputation in vaccine research bodes well for the new director and the institution.
“There will be challenges but he has the opportunity to really add his flair to the whole situation.”
Perkins called Potter a brilliant scientist who works well with others in research.
“He brings out the best in them.”
