About us

Robert Brunham
Provincial Executive Director and Scientific Director, BCCDC

Portrait of Robert Brunham

Dr. Robert Brunham is also PREVENT team leader, Director UBC CDC and Professor, Medicine, UBC.

"What PREVENT will do is allow us to work on key vaccines that are important to public health, whose prototypes have shown great promise, but that now need to be further developed and tested to make them viable for Canadian vaccine manufacturers. Our projections estimate that PREVENT could increase a vaccine product's success by five-fold. This offers incredibly good value and fills in a very real gap between the vaccine scientist and the vaccine industry. In other words, we want to move key vaccines from the lab to hospitals and doctors' offices, so that humanity can benefit as a result."

Dr. Robert C. Brunham is the Provincial Executive and Scientific Director of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) and Director of the University of British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (UBC CDC). The BCCDC and UBC CDC have become a national Centre of Excellence in infectious disease research and is widely recognized as Canada 's model public health training and research centre.

He is a professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at UBC and an international authority on infectious diseases. His research centres on the immunology and epidemiology of sexually transmitted diseases and on the origins of emerging infectious diseases. He has published over 230 articles and book chapters on various aspects of infectious diseases. Much of his research has dealt with developing a vaccine for Chlamydia trachomatis.

In collaboration with UBC scientists, he recently pioneered a cutting edge proteomic approach to Chlamydia vaccine development, which has generated international interest and financial support from the National Institutes of Health.

Under his leadership the BCCDC proved especially crucial in the successful containment of SARS in 2003 and was co-lead in sequencing the SARS genome and fast tracking the development of a SARS vaccine.

Dr. Brunham has received international recognition and awards for his contributions to the field of infectious diseases prevention. He was the 2004 recipient of the prestigious Thomas Parran Award from the American Sexually Transmitted Disease Association for his long and distinguished contributions in research and was the 2005 recipient of the CIHR Partnership Award for his leadership in the SARS Accelerated Vaccine Initiative.


Did you know?
image of E. coli bacteria

Escherichia coli (E. coli), is a bacterium commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded animals. Most E. coli strains are harmless and are part of the normal beneficial flora of the gut, but some, such as serotype O157:H7, can cause serious food poisoning in humans. Ingestion of contaminated water or food is the usual causes of illness from E. coli.

BACKGROUNDER

Immunization:
Inoculation and Vaccination

Inoculation (also known as variolation) was introduced to the west by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), who witnessed inoculation being
portrait of lady
practiced by physicians in Constantinople,[12] and was greatly impressed:[13] she had lost a brother to smallpox and bore facial scars from the disease herself. In 1718 she had the embassy surgeon inoculate her son, and in 1721, after returning to England, had her daughter inoculated[14]. In 1722 the Prince of Wales' daughters received inoculations[16].

The practice of inoculation slowly spread amongst the royal families of Europe, followed by general adoption amongst the rest of the population. Given the severe consequences of smallpox in Europe in the 18th century, many parents felt that the benefits outweighed the risks and so inoculated their children.[21] [22]

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