Max D. Summers

Summers graduated in 1962 from Wilmington College with an A.B. in biology. In 1968 he received a PhD in entomology from Purdue University. In the department of botany of the University of Texas he became an assistant professor and then an associate professor. In the department of entomology of Texas A&M University he became in 1977 a full professor, retiring as professor emeritus in 2011.[1]

Together with his former student, Gale Smith, Summers was responsible for the pioneering and enabling research that developed the baculovirus expression vector system (BEVS). BEVS has been routinely used in agricultural and medical research for basic research, gene discovery and for the commercial development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. Among its numerous impacts on society, BEVS has been used in the development of vaccines for the prevention of several human cancers, thus saving hundreds of thousands of lives a year.[1]

Gale E. Smith[4] received in 1986 his Ph.D. in molecular biology with Summers as thesis advisor. In 1988 Smith and Summers were granted the key BEVS patent, U.S. Patent No. 4,745,051: "Method for Producing a Recombinant baculovirus Expression Vector", with assignee the Texas A&M University System.[5][2]

Summers and co-workers demonstrated that mutations of integral membrane proteins expressed within the inner nuclear membrane of the nuclear envelope can cause diseases associated with muscular dystrophies and lipodystrophies. Their research was an important contribution to knowledge of protein targeting with many possible applications to medicine and agricultural pest control.[1]

Summers is the author or co-author of more than 170 articles in academic journals.[5] In 2001 the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) listed him among the 250 most cited microbiologists in the world. He was an editorial board member of Virology and the executive editor of Protein Expression and Purification.[1]

• 1989 — Member of the National Academy of Sciences[3]
• 1989 — Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science[6]
• 1991–1992 — President of the American Society for Virology[7]
• 1992 — Distinguished Alumni Award from the Purdue University School of Agriculture
• 1999 — Gulf Coast Inventor of the Year Award from the Houston Intellectual Property Lawyers' Association[8]
• 2009 — 'Father of Baculovirus Expression Technology' Award[5] from Williamsburg Bioprocessing Foundation (WilBio)[9]