Generations Benefit From the Work of Vaccine Researcher Gilbert Schiff
Researcher, physician, president, professor. Infectious disease specialist Gilbert Schiff, MD, has worn many hats in his long and distinguished career at the Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health (NIH), University of Cincinnati, James N. Gamble Institute of Medical Research and Cincinnati Children's.
Dr. Gilbert Schiff's long career has had a major impact on both the field of research and on all those who have followed him into the field.
Thanks in part to his research, generations of children have avoided the itching and discomfort of rubella. Just as important, countless others have been spared from hearing loss, lower IQ, heart defects and other birth defects caused by congenital rubella.
"I am very proud of the work I did on the rubella vaccine and potential antiviral drugs for rubella," Dr. Schiff says. "I played a major role in evaluating the vaccine using the unique approach of challenge studies. We took healthy volunteers and made them sick in a very controlled situation. This design was very successful, and others followed our model."
Unique Challenge Studies
In challenge studies, researchers don't wait for an illness to break out in order to study it. They use the lowest dose of weakened virus that will produce the illness, administering vaccine and/or antiviral drugs prior to and/or after administering the weakened virus. "If the vaccine or antiviral drug doesn't work under these artificial circumstances that give it the best chance of success, you know it's not going to work at all," Dr. Schiff explains. "These studies are difficult to do, and we are very good at them."
More than 1,000 students participated in rubella vaccine studies in Cincinnati's Princeton School District beginning in the mid-1960s. Dr. Schiff and his colleagues also studied several thousand newborns from the former Cincinnati General Hospital – some for up to 15 years – to track the symptoms of congenital rubella.
They discovered that 50 percent of those with the disease had no symptoms when born, but still were at risk of developing major birth defects and infecting others, including pregnant women.
Another point of pride for Dr. Schiff is the creation of the Gamble Program for Clinical Studies at Cincinnati Children's, which he founded as The Christ Hospital Institute (later the James N. Gamble Institute) of Medical Research in 1974. "At that time, it was almost unheard of to start a biomedical research institute that was not an academic center or a government laboratory. My goal was to put clinical and basic researchers on an equal footing, which was challenging. We had a generous endowment that, along with this emphasis on equality, made it possible to recruit outstanding researchers."
Building a Team
Creating a "team player" attitude was Dr. Schiff 's goal. He speaks with fondness about the good rapport researchers developed with the medical community, sponsors that included pharmaceutical companies and the NIH, and research subjects. "We were successful because we enjoyed interacting with our research participants. Ninety percent of them wanted to do our next study because they became aware that they were the 'keys' to the success of the research programs, their participation was greatly appreciated, and they were treated so well," he remembers.
Of the many persons of all levels who worked part- or fulltime at the institute, close to 50 became physicians or researchers. "That's remarkable, because we were doing research and weren't focused on training," Dr. Schiff says.
To help hone his administrative skills, Dr. Schiff became active in the 89-member Association of Independent Research Institutes, eventually serving as president and head of governmental affairs. "My contribution was to get the group involved in clinical research. Today, independent research institutes receive 15 percent of the annual competitive grants awarded by the NIH."
In 1994, Dr. Schiff was instrumental in gaining designation for the Gamble Institute of Medical Research as one of five (now seven) highly sought Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units (VTEU) of the NIH. The following year, he led the group as they moved to Cincinnati Children's, a home that Dr. Schiff saw as best for the vaccine and antiviral drug testing that distinguished the institute's work. The program remains a prestigious VTEU to this day.
Now emeritus professor of medicine and pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's, Dr. Schiff keeps busy spending time with family (wife Marian, children, grandchildren and siblings), helping to improve institutional review boards at local hospitals, networking with lifelong friends and continuing to do some research. "The bottom line is that I wanted research to be fun, so that the researchers enjoyed it," he says. "I'm very proud of what we achieved."
