Cancer, Vaccine centers each renamed

n recognition of a Rochester entrepreneur's contributions to fund cancer research, teaching, and treatment at the University, the Cancer Center has been renamed the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center.

And to honor a School of Medicine and Dentistry graduate whose work, along with others, resulted in a vaccine that has virtually wiped out bacterial meningitis in children, a new research center in the Aab Institute of Biomedical Sciences has been named the David H. Smith Center for Vaccine Biology and Immunology.

In separate ceremonies in November and December, the Medical Center recognized the contributions of each center's namesake.

Through the James P. Wilmot Foundation, Wilmot and his family have given more than $13 million to fund the center's work, a tradition of generosity unmatched by any single donor in the center's history.

Wilmot founded Page Airways, Inc., now Page Avjet Corp., as well as Wilmorite, Inc.

At the urging of his personal physician and devoted friend Jacob D. Goldstein, Wilmot founded the James P. Wilmot Foundation, a philanthropy dedicated to attracting, training, and supporting doctors who are pursuing careers in cancer research through the Wilmot Fellowship program.

Located on the top floor of the Arthur Kornberg Medical Research Building, the vaccine center focuses on research designed to lead to the next generation of vaccines for infectious diseases, cancer, and allergies.

Smith, who died in February 1999, graduated from the School of Medicine and Dentistry in 1958. Following pediatrics training in Boston and postdoctoral research at Harvard University, Smith returned to Rochester to chair the Department of Pediatrics in 1976.

During the next decade, Smith and his team tested, licensed, and began producing the first vaccine for Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib), the bacterium responsible for nearly all cases of childhood meningitis.

Smith also founded Praxis Biologics, a pharmaceutical company, when other major pharmaceutical firms resisted buying the rights to the vaccine. The Hib vaccine is now administered to all newborns in the United States and has reduced the incidence of bacterial meningitis by 98 percent.

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