Dr. Pablo Valenzuela was born in 1941, Santiago, Chile, and has made significant impact in blood saftety and disease treatment. He obtained his BS (1967) in Biochemistry from the University of Chile, PhD (1970) in Chemistry at Northwestern University, Postdoctoral training at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), and was a Professor in Biochemistry at UCSF.
In 1981, he and his colleagues, W. Rutter and E Penhoet, founded Chiron Corporation, which would later become the second-largest biotech company in the late 1990s. As the Research Director of Chiron, Dr. Valenzuela oversaw the development and launch of the first recombinant vaccine against Hepatitis B in 1986. Chiron scientists named the Hepatitis C virus in 1989, and they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2020 for this discovery (though he wasn’t on the paper, he led the project). In 1993, they announced FDA approval for the first treatment for multiple sclerosis in the US.
In the 1990s, he returned to Chile to found the country’s first biotechnology company, GrupoBios SA Chile, which earned him Chile’s National Prize for Applied Sciences and Technologies in 2002. Alongside this, in 1997, he founded the nonprofit organization Fundación Ciencia Para la Vida, where he continues to work on scientific and technological research. He has more than 50 patents in Chile and worldwide.
REFERENCES:
- https://cienciavida.org/investigator/pablo-valenzuela-phd/
- https://www.emol.com/noticias/nacional/2002/08/28/93515/pablo-valenzuela-valdes-gana-el-premio-nacional-de-ciencias.html
- https://web.archive.org/web/20110725011343/http://www.thisischile.cl/Articles.aspx?id=2062&sec=362&itz=interface-acerca-gente-chilenosdestacados&eje=Acerca&idioma=2&t=pablo-valenzuela-valdes
- https://web.archive.org/web/20140226034232/https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/24/business/company-news-fda-approves-a-multiple-sclerosis-drug.html
- https://cienciavida.org/2015/10/pablo-valenzuela-scientific-director-and-cofounder-of-fundacion-ciencia-vida-was-honored-by-the-world-intellectual-property-organization-wipo-with-the-gold-medal-for-inventors/
IMAGE Source:
- Chilean biochemist Pablo DT Valenzuela
- Public Domain
- Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication
- January 17, 2011
