Shown below is a translation of the article that originally appeared in the Science DongA magazine in Korean.

 

Interview with Winners of ‘Nobel Prize for Vaccines’ : “Vaccines save Lives”

 

July 2025 | Soyeon Kim | Science DongA

 

 

A miracle at the frontlines of the war against disease that protects humanity—this is what a vaccine means. Since the British doctor Edward Jenner developed the first vaccine in 1798, there have been countless heroic stories over the 230-year history of vaccination. This time, two key figures in the fight to conquer polio have come to Korea. On May 1st, at the headquarters of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) in Seoul, we learned about the reason for their visit and the significance of vaccines.

Do you recall the hot summer days of wearing masks to guard against COVID-19? For over three years, humanity battled against the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to vaccines, that crisis now seems like a distant memory.

“I am extremely pleased and happy to have contributed to saving so many lives around the world with the technology I helped develop.” That was the impression shared by Katalin Karikó, Senior Vice President of Germany’s BioNTech, who made a major contribution to the development of mRNA vaccine technology and received the 1st IVI-SK bioscience Park MahnHoon Award in 2022. Karikó and Dr. Drew Weissman of the University of Pennsylvania are considered central to the development of the COVID-19 vaccine. Their mRNA technology enabled vaccines to be produced faster and in greater quantities than existing methods, allowing rapid worldwide distribution that helped curb the pandemic’s spread.

In addition to Karikó and Weissman, there are numerous other heroes in the history of vaccines whose achievements deserve recognition. To honor these achievements, the IVI—established in 1997 by UNDP—collaborates with SK bioscience to annually award the IVI-SK bioscience Park MahnHoon Award. The late Park MahnHoon, former vice chairman of SK bioscience, dedicated his life to Korean vaccine R&D and the nation’s vaccine technology independence. Thus, the award was established in his honor in 2021 after his passing.

In 2025, four pioneers jointly received the IVI-SK bioscience Park MahnHoon Award. Pierre Van Damme, professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and Ananda Sankar Bandyopadhyay, deputy director of the polio division at the Gates Foundation, were recognized for their development and deployment of the novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2). Luiza Helena Trajano, head of Brazil’s Grupo Mulheres do Brasil, and Svetha Janumpalli, head of Nigeria’s ‘New Incentives’—both of whom established non-profits to increase vaccination rates in Brazil and Nigeria—were also honored.

On May 1, at the headquarters of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, we met with Prof. Van Damme and Dr. Bandyopadhyay to hear their thoughts on receiving the award as well as the behind-the-scenes stories of developing the type 2 polio vaccine.

 

Continuing Salk’s Legacy in the Fight Against Polio

“I am extremely honored to receive this award. The IVI-SK bioscience Park MahnHoon Award is highly valued among vaccine researchers and global health policy leaders. Vaccine is a technology that directly saves lives. I am happy to receive such a significant award, one that encourages those who develop and distribute vaccines,” Bandyopadhyay replied with a smile when congratulated.

His phrase “vaccines save lives” sums up decades spent at the frontline watching the impact of polio vaccines. He is currently researching polio vaccines in the polio department of the Gates Foundation, established by Bill Gates and Melinda Gates in the United States. The nOPV2 vaccine, which he helped develop together with Professor Van Damme working with other researchers and collaborators, has been administered more than 1.5 billion times in over 41 countries so far.

“I began as a public health officer in Kolkata, India, more than fifteen years ago, where I directly observed the power of vaccines. Polio is a disease that paralyzes children. It’s highly contagious, particularly thriving among socio-economically vulnerable children. In India, wherever polio vaccine campaigns were undertaken, infection rates dropped dramatically. That dramatic effect taught me the power of vaccines.”

Polio arises when the poliovirus invades the nervous system, initially causing muscle weakness, and progressing to temporary or permanent paralysis and deformity. Polio is primarily spread through contaminated water or food and multiplies quickly in unsanitary environments.

In the mid-20th century, polio was a global scourge—in the United States, there were 57,628 polio cases reported in 1952, even President Franklin Roosevelt suffered from it. Korea also experienced polio outbreaks in the 1950s, with over 1,000 cases reported annually from the late ‘50s into the early ‘60s.

The tide on polio changed rapidly thanks to American medical scientist Jonas Edward Salk, who single-mindedly researched polio vaccines from 1948 and succeeded in developing the world’s first inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) in 1952. By 1955, its safety was confirmed, opening a new chapter in the battle against polio. Thanks to Salk’s vaccine, there weren’t any new polio cases in the U.S. between 1979 and 1999; Korea has also been polio-free since 1984.

Salk is remembered not only for inventing the polio vaccine, but also for famously declining to patent it, saying, “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” Because he did not patent the vaccine, it could be administered to rich and poor alike across the world.

 

Toward Safer and Faster Vaccine Development

Salk’s legacy continues to this day. Polio is now on the verge of eradication, after smallpox, but some problems remain. There are two main types of polio vaccines: the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), which Salk innovated, and the live vaccine called oral polio vaccine (OPV). IPV has a low incidence of side effects because it uses a killed virus; however, its efficiency is reduced due to the need for injection with a needle.

Conversely, OPV uses a weakened live virus. Although the OPV undergoes a process to eliminate contagiousness and virulence, there have been reported cases—approximately one in two million—where the poliovirus in the vaccine mutates and causes paralysis. Despite these risks, OPV cannot be immediately discontinued because they are especially effective for vulnerable populations. Because OPV is administered orally, it is easy to use even where medical facilities are lacking and it can help interrupt outbreaks.

In addition, a live vaccine is, as the name suggests, a “live but non-disease-causing poliovirus.” The attenuated poliovirus can be transmitted from a person who has received the live vaccine to others who have not been vaccinated, thereby extending the vaccine’s protective effect to those around them. For this reason, inactivated polio vaccines are mainly used in developed countries with well-established healthcare infrastructures, while live vaccines are primarily used in developing countries.

Bandyopadhyay and his team, as part of a WHO-led consortium, worked on developing a new, safer oral polio vaccine (nOPV2). “The development of nOPV2 paved the way in many respects,” he said. “Thanks to the collaboration with scientists and researchers from UCSF, US CDC and NIBSC and others, we were able to genetically re-engineer the poliovirus, correcting the parts likely to mutate and improving stability. And then the clinical development and delivery at scale were a first in vaccine history—designing live vaccines with genetic modifications, developing them at scale and delivering them to billions of children.”

The method of conducting clinical trials for the developed vaccine was also new. This is where Professor Van Damme comes in. “My role began after the nOPV2 vaccine was developed. Dr. Bandyopadhyay and I first met in 2014 at a breakfast with other researchers. At that time, Bandyopadhyay was considering ways to conduct clinical trials for the nOPV2 vaccine quickly. We ended up having a meeting that lasted over two hours during that breakfast,” he said. Bandyopadhyay added, “Now, whenever Professor Van Damme asks me to have breakfast, I always say no at first.”

 

After the Pandemic, Scientists Prepare for the Next

“We first needed a space where clinical trial participants could stay for a month. Research on the vaccine also had to be conducted there at the same time. We had very little time. When I thought of children suffering from polio around the world, it was impossible not to feel a sense of urgency,” explained Bandyopadhyay.

Van Damme had already been recognized for his work in vaccine clinical trials and in vaccine development and distribution policy. In 2017, he set up a facility called ‘Poliopolis’ in the parking lot of Antwerp University Hospital to begin phase one clinical trials for the nOPV2 vaccine. By quickly shipping in 66 containers, the facility completed clinical phase one trials in less than a year—a significant achievement.

“Every step of the nOPV2 vaccine clinical trial in Poliopolis was a challenge. Recruiting volunteers, building the lab system, transporting the completed vaccine samples to the CDC in Atlanta—all of it was far from an easy process. But tackling unusual challenges can be incredibly motivating. For the two years of the clinical trials, my team and I worked night and day,” he recalled.

The collaboration between Bandyopadhyay and Van Damme and several other major partners such as those from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, nOPV scientific consortium, PATH, FIDEC, VaxTrials, icddr,b resulted in success in 2021. The nOPV2 vaccine received emergency use approval from the WHO in 2020 and, from 2021, began to be used in countries such as Nigeria and Liberia.

But that was not the end. In 2022, Professor Van Damme went even further by establishing ‘Vaccinopolis’ at the University of Antwerp. Vaccinopolis has since become a WHO center for infectious disease prevention research and contributed to COVID-19 vaccine development as well.

“After the COVID-19 pandemic, Vaccinopolis has become a permanent institution,” Professor Van Damme said. “Here, we’re conducting research not only on COVID-19 and influenza vaccines, but also to prepare for the next pandemic.”

Throughout the interview, the two polio vaccine heroes consistently emphasized the need to continue to remember the value of vaccines even after the pandemic is over. While the COVID-19 pandemic has ended, the battle against infectious diseases continues in many parts of the world, so there is no rest for vaccine researchers. When asked about his future research plans, Bandyopadhyay replied as follows:

“Viruses do not discriminate. They spread regardless of country, region, or race. That’s why we must unite across our differences more than ever. We’ve already seen, through the COVID-19 pandemic, what can happen. From now on, my team and I will work to make polio vaccines more affordable and accessible. We are striving to develop cheaper and more stable vaccines. Vaccines save lives. To see children suffer and die from diseases that are entirely preventable with vaccines is something I cannot tolerate.”

 

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Translated by Hayoon Kim

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