Founder of SLU’s Vaccine Center Receives Lifetime Honor for Career Spent Fighting Infectious Diseases

02/16/2023

Robert Belshe, M.D., professor emeritus in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Allergy and Immunology and founder of Saint Louis University’s Center for Vaccine Development, has been named as the recipient of the 2023 American College of Physicians James D. Bruce Memorial Award for Distinguished Contributions in Preventive Medicine.

“It’s always great to hear that other people recognize the contributions that I’ve made and that the Vaccine Center has made to public health,” Belshe said. “We as a people are significantly better off today due to this body of work. It’s very much a lifetime achievement award recognizing what I have done in conjunction with my colleagues.” 

Belshe spent a lifetime devoted to preventive medicine — notably working on vaccines. He earned his bachelor of science degree from the College of William and Mary in 1970 and his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 1973. 

From there, he took a job with the U.S. Public Health Service. He worked at the National Institutes of Health before moving to academia and taking a job with Marshall University. In 1989 he joined Saint Louis University as the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases & Immunology and professor of medicine. 

Belshe retired from SLU in 2014 with emeritus status. 

“I think building the Vaccine Center is what I’m most proud of,” he said. “I came to SLU in 1989, and I organized and built the Center for Vaccine Development at Saint Louis University. I brought with me several other faculty and staff and hired many additional faculty and staff, and together, we built the Center, which has been enormously successful. It has brought in very large research grants and contracts that allowed us to accomplish all that we did.”

For 31 years, Belshe served as overall principal investigator for SLU’s Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit (VTEU),  one of only 10 federally funded units tasked with developing and evaluating vaccines to protect people from infectious diseases and emerging threats.  

Current director of the Vaccine Center, Daniel Hoft, M.D., Ph.D., considers Belshe a mentor. 

"Dr. Belshe was and continues to be an outstanding mentor to me, which has greatly facilitated my professional success,” Hoft said. “Perhaps his most important guidance was critical in steering me into human immunological research. He urged me to step out of my comfort zone (mouse immunology) and helped me become an investigator who really focused on the dissection of human immune responses critical for protective responses to infectious diseases and effective vaccines. All the research I have conducted over the past 30 years since has been focused on human immune responses required for optimal vaccine responses."

As a researcher, influenza was one of Belshe’s primary areas of focus. He holds intellectual property jointly with the National Institutes of Health on a live attenuated parainfluenza 3 vaccine that was developed in his laboratory. 

“I think an important thing about the award is that it honors a track record of many, many years of working on new vaccines,” he said. “This is really not just my award; it also belongs to the Vaccine Center at Saint Louis University. If you just look at what the University has contributed, it’s really quite a lot. The award honors the decades of work at SLU, not just by me but by many others in the vaccine center – work that continues today.”

Although Belshe is no longer involved in the daily operations of the vaccine center, he said he is proud of the work happening at the center. 

“It’s incredibly important to me to see it continue,” he said. “As we’ve seen in the last few years, we’re not done with infectious diseases. We’re going to have other emerging infectious diseases. Without continued vigilance in public health, global infections will rise. It’s going to be important to prepare for the emergence of new infectious diseases, which will continue to happen — that’s the nature of biology. Everything evolves, and we have to be smart and stay ahead of it.”

Throughout his career, he received a number of awards, including the Marshall University Research Award for Distinguished Accomplishment in Research in Med & Applied Science, the 1994 Distinguished Teacher of the Year from the St. Louis Historical Society, the Red Ribbon Award for recognition for work in the HIV Affected Community from The AIDS Foundation, The Scientific American 50 for 2005 Leaders Shaping the Future of Technology and the St. Louis Business Journal Healthcare Heroes Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Belshe said he is honored to receive the James D. Bruce Memorial Award — namely because he was recognized by his peers. 

“This ranks among the top honors I’ve received,” he said. “It’s nice to be recognized by the internal medicine doctors in the United States – this is the premier organization for them. … This is a national award from my peers all across the country — that’s very nice.”