Jan Vilcek

Jan T. Vilcek , born in 1933 with Bratislava in Slovakia, is a professor of medicine, virologist and American immunologist working with the New York University School off Medicine. It was made famous for its research on the immune system and the discovery of the drug Remicade® in 1989.

Biography

After the war, during which it had to hide persecutions Nazis, Jan Vilcek is medical student with Bratislava, then in Czechoslovakia. It obtains its doctorate of medicine of the Université Comenius in 1957, before being directed towards research in Virologie in order to obtain its thesis of science of the Institute of virology of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Science of Bratislava in 1962. Fleeing its country for inter alia political reasons, it comes to New York in 1965 and becomes off professor of Microbiologie of the New York University School Medicine. He has been an eminent member of this institution for more than 40 years.

Career of researcher

He then develops his set of themes of research on the Cytokine S, proteins controlling the Immune system partly, such as the Interféron for which he was a precursor, and the Tumor necrosis Factor (TNFα). In 1989, Jan Vilcek and its Junming collaborator develops It a monoclonal Anticorps anti-TNFα, a major regulating molecule of the inflammatory reaction implied in many pathologies related to the autoimmune diseases. In collaboration with a company of Biotechnology, they develop a therapeutic chimerical antibody named CA2, and now known under the name of Remicade®, which is a powerful anti-inflammatory drug used for the treatment of the Polyarthrite rhumatoïde, of the Maladie of Crohn, the hemorrhagic rectocolites, the Spondylarthrite ankylosante, the Psoriasis inflammatory, and other diseases. Remicade had major therapeutic successes, and encouraged the development of other inhibiters of TNFα such as the Adalimumab (Humira) and the étanercept (Enbrel).

Caritative implication

In 2000, Jan Vilcek and its Marica wife created the Fondation Vilcek which each year decrees a scientific price and an artistic price intended to reward work for researchers and foreign artists emigrating with the the United States. In 2005, Jan Vilcek made a donation of 105 million dollars to the Université of New York, which represented the fifth larger donation ever carried out at an American institution academic, in gratitude of the reception that NYU made him at the beginning of its career.

References

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