Guérin, Camille

▪ French biologist

born Dec. 22, 1872, Poitiers, Fr.

died June 9, 1961, Paris

      French co-developer, with Albert Calmette (Calmette, Albert), of Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, or BCG (BCG vaccine), a vaccine that was widely used in Europe and America in combatting tuberculosis.

      After preparing for a career in veterinary medicine, Guérin joined Calmette at the Pasteur Institute in Lille in 1897; from that time on he devoted his life to vaccination research. As early as 1906 he demonstrated that resistance to tuberculosis was related to the presence in the body of living bacilli. For a period of 13 years Calmette and Guérin produced increasingly less virulent subcultures of a bovine strain of the tubercle bacillus. In 1921 the two researchers believed the bacillus they had produced was harmless to humans but retained its power to stimulate antibody formation. In 1922 they first used it to vaccinate newborn infants at the Charité Hospital in Paris.

      From the 1930s, after all questions about its use were resolved, mass vaccination programs were carried out in Japan, Russia, China, England, Canada, France, and other countries. In 1950 the University of Illinois and the Research Foundation were licensed to prepare, distribute, and sell the vaccine in the United States. At the time of his death, Guérin was honorary director of the Pasteur Institute.

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