Vaccine River blindness.

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Well, there’s so many bad things happening in the world, but there are a lot of good things happening in the world. This morning with us is Roy Vagalis, and Roy Vagalis was a chairman of the Merch Company for a long time over twenty years, and then he served as chairman of the Board of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and

0:25 currently he is chairman at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and the board of Trustees at the University of Pennsylvania. He studied chemistry when he was growing up. Well, Royalist, you have done so many good things in the world. I’m not going to say the country, the world. You have saved many lives in Africa, you have saved many lives in China.

0:55 And one of your expressions was that there should be no politics involved when science is involved and you’re able to save lives. Tell us, tell us about your experiences at Merk.

1:12 Speaker 2 Yees, John. My time work started nineteen seventy five where I was head of there was Merk Research Laboratories, so they head of research for ten years, and then the next ten years eighty five to ninety four through ninety four, I was CEO and chairman during that period have the Mirk Research Group came up with a number of very

1:42 important drugs that are important to all people of the world. Those include, of course the discovery of the statins for control of blood cholesterol, and that was of course a drug that revolutionize the treatment of disease based on cholesterol levels.

2:03 And I’m sure there’s some large numbers of patients, probably over age sixty five, they’re probably ninety percent of people take a staaten and that that was due to the discoveries had merged and so. But in addition to drugs for common diseases like heart disease, there was also excuse me, there was also drugs for high blood pressure, infectious diseases,

2:40 antibiotics and other things that were important everywhere in the world. But on occasion they came up with drugs or vaccines vaccines that were not popular and not very much represented in large populations of the world that can afford to buy them. And two examples. One is the discovery of a drug that can control river blindness. And river blindness

3:14 is a disease that occurs is largely sub Saharan Africa, but also in parts of Asia and Latin America, but The drug is called mechazan and that was discovered by Bill Campbell and the team in Merk Research about nineteen seventy five, and we discovered that it was dynamite drug for killing parasites in all kinds of farm animals, and

3:52 farm animals have their growth blocked by picking up parasitic worms from the soil and taking a drug that would kill those parasitic.

4:10 Speaker 1 In doctor vagelist I understand we saved as many as one hundred million lives in Africa.

4:18 Speaker 2 Well, let me tell you about that. That is the drug was first used to kill animal parasites and help them gain way faster, and so it went on the market about nineteen seventy eight or nine, and then in nineteen eighty one they discovered that the drug also worked to kill this parasite that causes river blindness. River blindness

4:50 is caused by an oncle sourchal marbulus, which is the worm which is spread by a bite of a black fly, and the black flies live along rivers and therefore call river blindness because the worm that’s carried by these flies who were injected into a human, because they become tiny little microphilaria that caused enormous, enormous uh itching and they

5:25 also travel through all the skin and people are going crazy with itching, but they go into the eyes and towards blindness. Wow, and the blindness is very prevalent. So there there are over one hundred million people who who are at risk for losing their vision. And so so we had a drug that was that was able to

5:51 control that and kill all the parasites. But when given when dosing once per year, once or twice per year, and so we had this dynamized magical life drug that would kill these parasites and was very safe in humans.

6:10 In nineteen eighty seven, the drug was shown to be safe and effective in large political studies in Africa. And then we had a drug that was available but could not be afforded by any of the people who needed it.

6:28 These people were dirt poor and they also dying of starvation. And so we approached the governments of Africa and other places as well as the US government to see whether the governments could get behind this drug buy it for the people. And the answer was that it was not in their budget. They couldn’t do it. And so, when

6:54 faced with that, Merk made the decision in nineteen eighty seven and then now that they would contribute to blood free to anyone in the world for as long as it was required to make sure they did not become blier.

7:10 And I started nineteen eighty seven and each year since then because I am retired at stand of nineteen ninety four, so the next CEO made the decision again and right up to the right up to the president. Each year the company has it contributed more mextus to prevent river blindness, but also lymphatic philriasis another another parasitic infection which was

7:41 causing this one causes elephantiasis. And wow, so that between those two, between those two diseases, mectus N is given away contributed as the level of Let’s see, last year three hundred million people were treated free by MERD three.

8:04 Speaker 1 That is tremendous, tremendous. Now you also saved a lot of lives in China where they had hepatitis.

8:13 Speaker 2 I believe that’s right, that’s right, jar which is and that is we discovered another product which was a vaccine that was developed in the United States and recombinant vaccine which was approved in the US for use in children.

8:32 Vaccinate children and was approved in nineteen eighty six, and the vaccine prevented an infection by a virus, hepatitis B virus, which gets into the liver and causes it to sale in some people. The prevalence of that virus in the US was about one half of one percent. The virus goes on in the liver causing chronic liver disease and

9:05 also liver cancer.

9:07 Speaker 1 And it estimated that you saved another one hundred million people in China. Is that a good number.

9:15 Speaker 2 No, the number is not big enough. I’ll tell you what it was, and that is we developed the vaccine and recombined vaccine, the first in the world, and put it on the market in the US. The Chinese came and they explained to us, the Chinese government did. They explained that the prevalence, that is the presence of that

9:41 virus in their population was nine percent. Nine percent of people were carrying in their liver a virus that caused chronic liver disease and liver cancer. And it was the number two cause of death in China, after number one, which was cigarette smoking, and so so it was very important to that and they had no money, They had

10:09 no money. They so we wanted to do something for them, and we finally landed on the idea of training Chinese scientists and the engineers to make the vaccine. They came and spent months and the Mirk facilities to learn how to make the vaccine, which they did in nineteen ninety four, started manufacturing the vaccine in China that was the Merk vaccine,

10:44 no royalty, no cost to them, that made not a penny of profit. But they did this and the infection rate was in China was nine percent at this tart when they were fully vaccinated, and dropped to less than four point five percent, less than one half of one percent.

11:11 Speaker 1 That is wonderful. That is wonderful. Tell me how you feel that you’ve saved so many lives by the actions you took. Give me your inner feelings.

11:22 Speaker 2 Well, my inner feelings are those of a doctor. You know. I was an MD from Columbia who practiced for a short time but then did research and ended up in drug discovery. And the numbers of patients that are drugs saved lives or improved hell, there’s many, many, hundreds of millions.

11:48 And that’s what I love about my profession and love about my career and tried to convince young people to follow suit and both practice medicine and get into drug discovery if they’re interested, because it’s a wonderful way of life.

12:09 Speaker 1 Now, doctor Ragulus, you’ve been involved in the last ten years fifteen years with another company called Regeneron, which has created a lot of miracle drugs too.

12:24 Speaker 2 Yes, Regeneral was a startup when I started. I retired from merth As the end of nineteen ninety four and at the beginning of nineteen ninety I joined the board of Regenera, a startup that was having some difficulties and I had the idea of helping them by being chairman of their board for a couple of years. As it

12:51 turned out that took the help. It was extended because I remade as chairman for twenty eight years. Wow, and the company has done quite well and a lot of.

13:08 Speaker 1 Your wealth you have donated back to Colombia. Prespytuitian Hospital. Tell us what you’re doing with Columbia.

13:19 Speaker 2 Well, what we’re doing with Colombia is helping to train new young doctors who are really smart and are interested in health related careers of all sorts. So some of them will become practitioners, primary care doctors, many will become specialists and some of them will go into research. And we want all our students to understand what the science

13:48 is so they can help their patients maximally and they do a wonderful job. So we support scholarships to support the student. The students who have financial needs can come to Colombia Medical School and they will have all expenses paid if they have financial need, tuition and living expenses, everything, so that our students graduate from medical school with no

14:24 debt at all. And so this is a wonderful thing for them, and my wife and I love to do that kind of thing. But we also contribute to undergraduate students at the University of Pennsylvania and a pirate college, and these are our three areas of targeting to help students, mostly on the science side.

14:54 Speaker 1 Understood, Professor Professor and doctor Roy Gradualist. Thank you so much for everything you do and I look forward to talking again in the future on more accomplishments. And God bless you and God bless America.

15:11 Speaker 2 John. I looked forward to having you attend our meeting in the Board of Advisors because you’ve been very helpless to the medical school and in Columbia which is now Vangelist College of Physicians and Surgeons. So thanks a lot for giving me an opportunity to tell you some of the things that happened at MERT.

15:35 Speaker 1 I look forward to it and have a great weekend

15:39 Speaker 2 You too, job Bye bye bye