Robert Rose ’84 remembers the decisive moment as a Geneseo sophomore that inspired his interest in biology. While walking in a Bailey Hall corridor between classes, he spotted an electron micrograph image of a T4 bacteriophage, a virus that infects bacteria.

“It looked like a lunar lander and I thought, ‘That is the most amazing thing I have ever seen — and it just occurs in nature,’” he says. “I had to know more and became permanently fascinated with virus structure.”

That experience led Rose to the front lines in the war on cancer. He became one of three medical researchers at the University of Rochester responsible for developing a vaccine to prevent a cancer that kills more than a quarter million women around the world every year — 3,700 in the United States alone. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine for women in 2006 and recently approved it for males in the prevention of genital warts. Rose says the vaccine also has promise against some head, neck and throat cancers.

The vaccine is marketed either as Gardasil by Merck, which targets four strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), or Cervarix by GlaxoSmithKline, which targets the two most prevalent cancer-causing strains of the virus. The vaccine has been shown to prevent cervical cancer precursor lesions and, in the case of Gardasil, more than 90 percent of the cases of benign anogenital warts.

At Geneseo, Rose was a non-traditional student. After graduating from high school in Hornell, N.Y., he worked various jobs, including seven years in the railroad industry as a brakeman and trainmaster for Conrail.

“The railroad was a good job … but it didn’t feel right, so I took a chance,” he explains. “I quit and entered college full time at age 30.”

Rose had high praise for his Geneseo mentors.

“I washed laboratory glassware as a work-study student for Hank Latorella in biology … and he excited my scientific curiosity. I also hold Janice Lovett in high regard, who taught molecular biology, and microbiology Professor Bob Simon became the example of an academic researcher for me.”

After graduating magna cum laude from Geneseo, Rose earned a master’s degree in microbiology and a doctorate in virology, as he participated in the team’s vaccine development.

“It’s very humbling to know that something we cooked up in the lab … has the capacity to
prevent death and the terrible morbidity of a cancer,” he says. “This work was the most exciting thing I have ever been involved with in my life and I was thrilled to be a part of it.”