U of Sask.'s Andy Potter, who did groundbreaking vaccine research, set to retire after 37-year career

After a career spanning 37 years, which included groundbreaking research around vaccines, the University of Saskatchewan's Andy Potter is hanging up his lab coat.

Potter, who also previously served as CEO of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization-International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac), joined CBC Radio's Garth Materie to discuss his career, his thoughts on vaccines and vaccine hesitancy, and what's in store for his future on Thursday afternoon.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q: Andy, 37 years is a long time. What are you most proud of? 

No. 1, first and foremost, is … the people I have worked with — that includes scientists, it includes students, it includes technicians, post-doctoral fellows, administrators and on and on and on.

They have made that job worthwhile, they have made that job fun and I will miss that more than anything.

The other part is just watching an organization like VIDO [grow] from 1984, when they hired me — there were less than 20 employees there and it was a fairly modest facility.

If one looks at it today, there's — I don't know how many employees they have, actually. But it's got to be 200 or more and the facilities are without par in Canada and one of the best in the world for looking at infectious diseases, including pandemic diseases.

Q: Tell me about some of the vaccines you've helped create over your career.

We've done a number of vaccines for animals. My interest has been primarily in pneumonia in animals as well as humans. So we developed shipping fever vaccines, which were commercialized a long time ago, back in 1991 or so. 

Also all sorts of vaccines for pigs and another one for E. coli 157, an infection in cattle — although that was to prevent the disease in humans, because [E. coli 157] doesn't cause disease in cattle — and a variety of other human vaccines as well that we had worked on … as part of the Pan-Provincial Enterprise, or PREVENT, that is still around as a company. 

Q: What's it like to watch some of your grad students go on to be leaders in their fields?

It's been wonderful.… I engage with them on a different level, but still just person to person, it's been absolutely wonderful. 

These people are just absolutely great and they're sort of the legacy I would leave.