Vicente Vérez scientist who is leader of the Soberana Project

June 26, 2021

# How a curious boy from a modest home became the renowned scientist who created vaccines: the story of Dr. Vicente Vérez Bencomo

How that curious child, raised in a modest household in resources but rich in human values, came to become the renowned scientist who has brought vaccines into being — this dialogue, which became a portrait, addressed this: the life story of Dr. Vicente Vérez Bencomo, leader of the Soberana vaccines project and General Director of the Finlay Institute.

He came into the world in a Havana clinic and spent his childhood under the warmth and values of a family in Centro Habana. His mother: a homemaker, daughter of a peasant family from Alquízar, who moved to Havana. His father had brought from Lugo, Spain, the hope that she would give him a home.

They lived on a small salary to support them all. "I spent most of my childhood in a passageway in Centro Habana, very humble, on Salud Street (an interior); a passageway that crosses two streets: Salud and Jesús Pelegrino, I spent all my childhood there, I was five years old when the Revolution triumphed. I experience those first strong years (...), which mark a child a lot".

He was born on June 25, 1953. "Life over the years has made me reflect and appreciate that, in another dimension. Of the children in our neighborhood, we all studied in primary school, some of us were able to study in secondary school and only three of us were able to study at the university, even though we had had opportunities.

"Evidently the social environment is an element that the Revolution could not eliminate with a single stroke of the pen. It took years. Now one really sees a family where all its children studied at the university and sees it as something normal. In the Centro Habana of the 1960s of the past century, it was not like that, it was a disadvantaged place; a place that needed years to pass for us to really reach what it is today.

He says that as a child, he did not always dream of being a chemist, but from those years he retains a fresh memory of his persistent curiosity. "An infinite curiosity, there was not a toy that I did not break. I remember that those Chinese toys came with some little marks and there was not one that I did not open because I was very interested in knowing what was inside that toy: how it walked, how that little motor worked…. And that infinite curiosity, perhaps a bit premature — because well, all children and young people have curiosity — (…) kept motivating me to know, to search, to see, to read and to try to understand the world because, ultimately, for those of us interested in science, that curiosity transforms into a curiosity to understand the world in which one lives".

"I always liked to do experiments of all kinds; mix substances and see that it changed. That magic of chemistry… and see that something new is generated simply by the mixture of the previous reaction. That was something that always fascinated me a lot — from a young age, from childhood — because we are talking about the first year of secondary school, then at about 10 years old. (…) In those secondary school days there were laboratories where practically no experiments were done, chemistry was theoretical, and I needed to see chemistry, I needed to see that magic.

"Therefore, it was a very big struggle: I managed to convince the school to give me a letter, (...) my parents to take ten pesos out of the little money they had and, then, sell me a box of glassware that I had carefully selected with the minimum I needed to take with me and set up a laboratory at home. And I set up that laboratory. A ten-year-old boy always has curiosity, I was always an intrepid person, that is another of my characteristics. (….) Intrepid, determined…".

He did "an experiment where I wanted to extract rose oil, copied the experiment from an encyclopedia, I go home, I look for rose petals, 90-degree alcohol from the pharmacy, I prepare all of that… I said: heat the rose petals in alcohol to boiling. I put a porcelain capsule, I put rose petals, alcohol, I put a burner underneath and light it". And "that was my first understanding of what was happening. Well, that of course caught fire… and the trouble I had putting it out, without them shutting down my laboratory!", shares Dr. Vérez, about the failed experiment on his patio.

He sums up the affection from the same gratitude for the humility in which he grew up: "I was formed in a very humble environment, and that is something of which I feel very proud".

"It is a different vision of life. For a child from Centro Habana it was much harder to succeed in school, in secondary school, at the university, and had many fewer rewards. I remember that among my friends there were some from families of doctors, intellectuals.

"As I have said publicly, my parents never reached sixth grade, either of them, unfortunately and even though they did not lack intelligence. Friends of mine were given a bicycle for grades lower than the ones I had and, well, I never had a bicycle. And, yet, over the years I have learned to value that what my parents gave me for my grades was much more important than the bicycle. They were always very proud, they always transmitted that pride to me, that clean honesty, that clean affection. That, maybe, when one is young one does not understand. But when time passes, one understands the value of all those things".

From there he goes to a prestigious university institution in the former Soviet Union: the Lomonosov Institute of Chemistry. "I studied chemical engineering. I am a chemical engineer-technologist, in the USSR they were always narrow fields of study. My training was excellent, it is a very strong engineering that gives you the vision to solve problems and understand processes, to break down life into processes and understand them. And, on the other hand, my passion for life was able to be completed", he says.

Studying that engineering "was a very difficult challenge, especially because of the language: Russian for Latin people is very complex". He reviews how it was that at 17 years old studying that language, learning it, "falling into a university studying entirely in Russian, oral exams… it was really a challenge. I tell you sincerely, one of my passions is challenges".

The Doctor says he came to think in Russian, even now he sometimes does, even certain assimilated concepts return to him in that language, although speaking it fluently now is difficult for him due to lack of practice.

From the capital of what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Vicente Vérez Bencomo returns to the University of Havana. He enters with his usual passions and humility, perhaps not knowing that there he would do science and, especially, make history.

His friend Leslie Yáñez González, who was then dean of the Chemistry Faculty of the UH, recounts that already in '84 he had returned with his Doctorate in Sciences, creates the carbohydrate laboratory in the Chemistry Faculty and, that same year, begins to simultaneously direct a synthetic chemistry laboratory at the National Center for Biopharmaceuticals. It is in the year '90 when those two laboratories merge and the Center for Studies of Synthetic Antigens is created: he is its scientific leader and director. From there he goes to the Scientific Pole.

"Vicente's talent, the passion for work, the capacity he has to bring together so many people around a project, his enthusiasm, proposing to achieve a goal and trying to achieve it in every way, the capacity he also has to overcome all obstacles. But, unquestionably, what constitutes a milestone in Vicente's life as a person, as a scientist, as a researcher, and a milestone in synthetic chemistry itself, is the vaccine against Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib)".

In fact, it is the first vaccine, in Cuba and in the world, that is marketable, made with a completely synthetic antigen, and that vaccine is applied to all our children, as part of the pentavalent vaccine. Therefore, all our children in their first year of life receive that vaccine. "That, unquestionably for Vicente and his team represented a great achievement. For the UH and for the Chemistry Faculty in particular, a pride that Vicente Vérez was part of our faculty for more than 30 years, for his exceptional qualities".

In the midst of emotions, Vérez makes a parenthesis that leads him to France and to that scientific degree with which he had returned to the UH. Memory takes him again to the University of Orleans, where he obtained a State Doctorate.

He affirms that that was one of the periods when he worked most intensely, allowing himself rest only one Sunday every three months. "That was my goal".

In Havana his wife Violeta had remained. She was one of his first university students and then, three months into dating, they decided to marry.

It was not easy to make one's way in the European nation. That feeling of contempt for being Cuban outlined the first challenge, even before those of an academic nature. He felt like "the Indian in a loincloth" in foreign land.

Upon his return in 1984, with Violeta he goes to the laboratory in the faculty and there the first synthetic antigen of leprosy is created, which was used in the SUMA. This allowed, among other things, for leprosy to cease to be endemic by the early '90s.

Already in the newly created Center for Studies of Synthetic Antigens they create the vaccine against Haemophilus influenzae, "very motivated by the achievements of Dr. Conchita at the Finlay Institute in the '80s, where she had obtained the anti-meningococcal vaccine. The remaining bacterium, Haemophilus influenzae type B, had an impact on meningitis and pneumonia. To seek an effective response to this, Vérez bet his dedication and dream.

The first conjugate vaccines in history were unattainable for countries like Cuba: a single dose exceeded 30 dollars and four were needed for immunization, in the midst of the Special Period.

"We decided that we were not going to use the bacterium to produce the antigen, but rather we were going to build it chemically. Build it completely", specifies the researcher. He comments that, in scientific terms, it was known how to build antigens in journals, even patents, "but from there to make a real vaccine, setting up a production process", there was an enormous challenge.

That challenge translated into vaccine was what deserved the WIPO award, and another of great prestige in San José, California (United States), in collaboration with a professor from the University of Ottawa (Canada). Additionally, the vaccine has been considered "an important achievement of synthetic chemistry and science in general".

Since 2003, the drug was registered and, a year later — in 2004 — immunization with it began. Some years later it became part of the pentavalent vaccine that all our children receive.

When referring to the mark of that discovery, he prefers to forego the praise that speaks of how much we Cubans owe him. "First, they owe me nothing, it is my duty; second, it is collective work, I don't like it to ever be personalized, these are always works of large collectives. If one happens to captain a ship, the ship is nothing with a captain; a ship with a captain is a ship adrift; it is only a ship with its entire crew and, really, I have had wonderful crews, to whom I owe everything".

To the young people who participated in that epic, he chooses to speak to them from a "small mathematical account": from that vaccine close to 60 million doses have been produced. For every 100,000 doses, the life of a child is saved, which means 6,000 children are alive because of what we did. And that really comforts, even if you don't see that child's face, even if you don't know who that child is".

To one of those young people, Yury — his team partner at the Finlay Vaccines Institute today — he then asked to renounce his last vacation as a student and to join the work the next day, in order to advance in the Haemophilus influenzae vaccine, under the promise that they would give him those postponed vacations afterward. "I still haven't been able to return those vacations to him and that was already about 20 years ago".

The Haemophilus vaccine: "It is an important discovery of our team, of those that break paths". Of those that open new trails. But, as he asserts.

The leader of the Soberana vaccines project recalled that, at the end of 2019, he was diagnosed with cancer: "It is a hard blow. I was really very depressed when the pandemic appeared". However, in that context, he began to lead the team that would be linked to the development of a Cuban vaccine against COVID-19. And that perhaps has to do with that capacity of Dr. Vicente Vérez to face challenges. And overcome them.

"President Díaz-Canel convenes us to bring the vaccine projects we had. That May 19, 2020 marked a milestone because we arrived with our projects. I present them to the president and he was very satisfied", he recalled.

After that, three days went by without sleeping to design what the Soberanas are today.

"When we saw that it was possible, we said 'we have to accelerate and speed up'", he said. And there is Soberana.