John Telford

John Telford is a research director and project leader in the research unit at Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics. John began his career as a staff scientist at the Sclavo Research Center in 1985 and has stayed with the company through mergers with Chiron and eventually Novartis in 2006. We sat down to talk with John about his research and his thoughts on Novartis Vaccines.

Our careers are a large part of our lives. How do you feel about your work here at Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics and your life connected to the work?

I’ve been working here for more than 20 years in research. Obviously my job is fulfilling and means a lot to me. I am a scientist, and research is where I have fun. But more importantly, it is a tremendous satisfaction when my job, the research, can for example produce a novel vaccine able to protect newborn babies from very serious diseases.

Within a recent restructuring of the research organization, I have been appointed head of a fairly large department, which has provided a significant step in my career and new exciting challenges. Novartis is a large, stable company that appears to be prepared to make the investment necessary to permit me to continue to contribute to a high quality of science. In addition, Novartis has the resources to take any new discoveries through clinical development.

How do you feel that the Novartis mission is integrated into your daily work?

At Novartis, we have the feeling that there is a real interest in developing novel products that will contribute to the fight against disease in people. There is clearly an interest at Novartis to invest in research and tackle the major problems of human disease, which we are currently facing and will continue to face in the future. This is very satisfying. It is also satisfying to have appropriate funding, the ability to do novel, cutting-edge research, and be part of a company that is aiming to produce products to protect and heal the greater society.

What element of your distinguished career with Novartis has been a crowning achievement or most exciting moment?

I would say two things. First, the discovery of pili on the surface of streptococci in 2005. These hair-like structures were a major scientific discovery after many years of research. Second, the initiation of clinical development of a vaccine against Group B Streptococci in December 2007. I would like to stress that, although I believe my role was important in these achievements, both were very much team efforts. It cannot be denied that our Director of Research, Rino Rappuoli, has had an enormous influence on the environment and quality of science being conducted at Novartis.

Part of Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics culture is to strive to be a leader in its field. Can you talk about what this means to you and the contributions you have seen to the greater scientific community?

At Novartis, the culture has always embraced innovative science – to be at the forefront – because we believe this is the path to designing novel vaccines. Using this approach, Novartis conceived and developed the idea of reverse vaccinology. Novartis is actually leading the field because we started early, because we realized the potential of genome sequencing in designing new vaccines.

I believe this novel approach is a significant contribution to the greater scientific and vaccine communities. By developing the concept of reverse vaccinology, we’ve contributed to the genome revolution in an enormous fashion, particularly using genomic approaches to solve past problems. People in the field have been studying serogroup B meningitis for more than four decades without producing an effective vaccine. Starting from the genome sequence, we at Novartis had a candidate in clinical trials within four years. The easy vaccines have all been made. Now we are up against the difficult ones, and I believe Novartis is up for the challenge.

 

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