by Skip Derra
For Roy Curtiss it’s always been about the people. The people he works with, the people he collaborates with; the people he learns from, the people he teaches; the people he is trying to help through his research.
The ASU professor is one of the leading microbial virulence experts in the nation. Curtiss is also co-director of the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at the Biodesign Institute. He has led an intensely successful scientific career that spans six decades.
Curtiss likes to say that he has “reinvented himself” many times, pursuing one idea, then changing course and going off in an entirely new direction.
These days the work is on new vaccines for the most needy.
“Right now, we devote more of our efforts into developing vaccines to prevent diseases. Twenty years ago I spent 90 percent of my time trying to figure out how pathogens invade, persist, and cause disease in a mechanistic way,” he says.
From humble beginnings in upstate New York, Curtiss has long shown a flair for genetics. He started on the family farm working with sunflowers and multi-colored tomatoes.
Encouraged by supportive parents, even as he would pursue unconventional ideas, Curtiss’s bright-eyed inquisitiveness has been focused on living things. At the age of five, he brought home a blue ribbon from the local 4H for the 12-foot tall sunflowers he grew. When he first saw a color seed catalog, Curtiss was floored at the fact that tomatoes are not just red.
“I asked my father, how was this possible?” Curtiss recalls. “He said it had to do with genetics, but let’s go talk with Mr. Terhune, (the vocational agriculture teacher at high school) and find out.”
Herbert Terhune encouraged the then 10-year-old Curtiss to experiment with seeds and learn why tomatoes are different colors.
“By the time I was 12 years old, I was hooked on genetics,” Curtiss says, eyes twinkling.
The ASU scientist also had a major flirtation with animal genetics in chickens and ducks. He raised his own, learning valuable lessons in animal husbandry and the spread of disease. Curtiss began with a starter group of 12 baby chicks. In four years he had more than 1,000 chickens in a poultry house outside a small barn on the family property.
But there were tests of his ingenuity and lessons to be learned. As a 10-year-old, Curtiss built a chicken pen, but his entire flock perished as a result of the building not having adequate space and ventilation. While a setback, this event only spurred Curtiss’s inquisitiveness. He called on Cornell University faculty to help him determine the cause and prevent any future outbreaks.
“As a young kid, I probably knew more about the science behind ducks and chickens than the people running the large duck farms,” Curtiss says matter-of-factly.
Cornell and its faculty also were a source of inspiration.
“I was going to Cornell when I was in 7th grade,” he says proudly. When Curtiss reached college age, Cornell was his only choice.
“I had a lot of amazing experiences. In my first year we were doing experiments showing that antibiotics are growth promoting. We had a contract with Lederele, which was making tetracycline. We discovered this increased performance.”
Through the years, Curtiss’s career followed zigs and zags according to his hunches and willingness to take new directions.
During those six decades of professional work Curtiss was exposed to an eminent group of scientists. These researchers pinned down the details of molecular genetics and ushered in the era of biotechnology. Six of them eventually won Nobel Prizes).
Curtiss also started biosciences departments at two schools—the University of Alabama-Birmingham and Washington University in St. Louis. He has worked at two U.S. national laboratories—Brookhaven and Oak Ridge. And he also started from scratch two biotech companies. He left both when he felt they were no longer going in the direction he thought was best.
At his ASU office, books and papers are strategically lumped in places around his desk and computer. While stroking his long, white beard, Curtiss adds, “It’s all about connections to people.”
Read more about Roy Curtiss's research in "Infect to protect."