Charles Merieux, the French virologist who pioneered the large-scale industrial production of vaccines that have saved millions of lives, died on January 18th aged 94. He also played a major role in many of the public health initiatives introduced by the World Health Organisation in developing countries.
His achievements covered diseases in people and animals. In the late 1950s he developed processes for the production of large quantities of the two polio vaccines and made a start on the worldwide eradication of the disease. His organisation, the Institut Merieux, refined and cultivated vaccines against rabies, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus and other diseases.
Born in Lyon, Charles Merieux was the younger of two sons. His father, Marcel Merieux, was a microbiologist and former assistant to Louis Pasteur, the scientist who made the connection between micro-organisms and disease. This was the foundation of modern bacteriology.
In 1897, Marcel Merieux had set up a laboratory to apply Pasteur's ideas to the diagnosis of diphtheria and to prepare serums. He bought 100 acres of land at Marcy l'Etoile, outside Lyon, for pasture for horses used to produce anti-diphtheria serum and for cows that would provide serum against foot-and-mouth disease.
The land is now the site of the world headquarters of the Merieux organisation, which, after Marcel Merieux's death, became a global powerhouse for preventive medicine under Charles Merieux's guidance.
Charles Merieux had intended to pursue a career in medicine, erieux studied medicine. but when his brother Jean died from meningitis contracted in his father's laboratory erieux he agreed to join the organisation after training in microbiological research at the Institut Pasteur. He inherited the laboratory when his father died in 1937.
During the second World War Charles Merieux created a blood transfusion centre for the French Resistance - his wife delivered the plasma to the fighters on her bicycle - and he produced and distributed protein-rich extracts to feed undernourished children.
After the war he went to the United States to study advances in purifying blood products from transfusions. He used this knowledge in planning the institute's future, because the French government had banned commercial laboratories from handling human blood products.
On returning to France, Charles Merieux concentrated on veterinary medicine and created the Institut Francais de la Fievre Aphteuse (the foot-and-mouth institute), where, for the first time, the virus was cultured on an industrial scale. The early method of cultivating foot-and-mouth was to apply it to the tongue of a live cow and harvest the multiplied cells from the resulting pustules. The work was laborious and produced only small amounts of usable virus.
Charles Merieux found a more efficient way, by harvesting the cow tongues and using the tissue to form a growth medium that could be used to produce viruses on an industrial scale. When, in the 1960s, a foot-and-mouth epidemic threatened livestock in Europe, he organised a "vaccine barrage" to stop its spread.
The next step was to apply similar techniques to human health. This began with the large-scale production of the Salk polio vaccine, cultivated on tissue from monkeys' kidneys.
Charles Merieux's vigorous approach to public health campaigns was apparent in 1973 when, in response to a meningitis epidemic in Brazil, he built a plant to produce enough vaccine for 90 million Brazilians. Later he designed a portable plant that could fit into a Hercules aircraft to treat outbreaks on the spot.
Charles Merieux's interest went beyond research and development and focused on the social and political mechanisms for delivering vaccines to large numbers of people. He believed it was not enough to manufacture the vaccines without addressing the logistical problems. In the early 1980s he formed a training organisation, Bioforce Developpement, to prepare professionals for public health emergencies.
In 1968, the controlling interest in Institut Merieux was sold to RhonePoulenc, the French pharmaceutical company. Charles Merieux: born 1907; died, January 2001