Professor Socrates Herrera

Professor Socrates Herrera qualified in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Caldas in Manizales, Colombia, in 1979. Following a year of social service to the Colombian government and a year as a research assistant at Hospital San Juan de Dion in Bogota, he spent a three-year postdoctoral training on malaria immunology at the Immunology Research and Training Center at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. In 1984 returned to Colombia to lead a TDR Institutional Strengthening Grant to establish a malaria research center at the School of Health of the University of Valle in Cali. During the 28 years of service at this University, he was vice-dean of research of the School of Health and vice-rector of research of the University and founded the Immunology Institute of Valle. He has been invited professor of the Biochemistry Institute at Lausanne University in Switzerland and an adjoint professor of the Universities of Tulane (New Orleans) and Miami (Florida).

In 1999 he founded the Malaria Vaccine Development Center (MVDC) with support from the WHO-TDR Special Programme, and in 2000 MVDC was awarded a grant from NIAID/NIH to establish in Colombia a Tropical Medicine Research Center focused on preclinical development of P. vivax vaccines. This TMRC stimulated the establishment of the Caucaseco Scientific Research Consortium (CSRC), including other research centers like the Instituto de Salud del Pacífico and the Primate Research Center, all of them dedicated to malaria research.  In 2010, CSRC was awarded by NIH-NIAID with a grant for the establishment of the Latin American International Center of Excellence for Malaria Research (ICEMR) that included research groups from Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, the USA, and Colombia. Under the lead of Professor Herrera, the Latin American ICEMR focused on research for malaria elimination in non-Amazonian regions of the American continent. Currently, he is a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Southern and Central Africa ICEMR lead by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and the Malawi ICEMR lead by Michigan State University.

During these three decades, Professor Herrera has established a unique array of facilities and technical and scientific capacity for malaria vaccine development at both preclinical and clinical levels. He is currently working on the clinical development of pre-erythrocytic vaccines, including P. vivax CSP and attenuated sporozoites taking advantage of the model for controlled human malaria infection using live sporozoites. Additionally, he has established at CSRC a dynamic research program on the discovery and preclinical development of novel P. vivax vaccine candidates from pre-erythrocytic, asexual erythrocytic, and gametocyte phases.