Robert Shope

Robert Ellis Shope (February 21, 1929 – January 19, 2004) was an American virologist, epidemiologist and public health expert, particularly known for his work on arthropod-borne viruses and emerging infectious diseases.

He discovered more novel viruses than any person previously, including members of the Arenavirus, Hantavirus, Lyssavirus and Orbivirus genera of RNA viruses.

He researched significant human diseases, including dengue, Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers and Lyme disease.

He had an encyclopedic knowledge of viruses, and curated a global reference collection of over 5,000 viral strains.

He was the lead author of a groundbreaking report on the threat posed by emerging infectious diseases, and also advised on climate change and bioterrorism.

Born in 1929 in Princeton, New Jersey, Shope was the son of Richard E. Shope, also a prominent virologist.

His brothers, Richard E. Shope, Jr and Thomas C. Shope, were also virologists.

Shope attended Cornell University, where he gained a BA in zoology (1951) and an MD (1954).

After an internship at Yale School of Medicine, Shope joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps and served for a total of three years at Camp Detrick in Frederick, Maryland and then at the U.S. Army Medical Research Unit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

He subsequently joined the Rockefeller Foundation and – after a year studying with Max Theiler in New York – he was posted to Belém, Brazil, at the foundation's International Virus Program, where he spent six years, rising to direct the institute.

During his time in Brazil in the early 1960s, he characterised over fifty different arboviruses (viruses transmitted by arthropods) including Guama and Oropouche viruses, many previously unknown.

He also studied the viruses' vertebrate reservoirs, including birds, marsupials and rodents.

Later that decade while at YARU, he characterised novel arboviruses from birds in Egypt.

Returning to the US in 1965, Shope joined the recently established Yale Arbovirus Research Unit (YARU) at Yale School of Medicine with other virologists from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Initially an associate professor, he rose to direct the unit for 24 years.

Shope also headed the university's Division of Infectious Disease Epidemiology.

In 1969, his research turned to outbreaks of Lassa and yellow fever in Nigeria.

The following year, with Frederick A. Murphy, he discovered Duvenhage, Lagos bat and Mokola viruses, which were the first viruses shown to be related to rabies.

In the late 1970s, with Jim Meegan, he showed that Rift Valley fever virus – previously believed to be restricted to sub-Saharan Africa, and mainly to infect livestock – was the cause of an epidemic in Egypt in which around 200,000 people were infected.

With Allan Steer, he was the first to describe Lyme disease, a tick-borne bacterial disease, in the US.

He subsequently worked on viral hemorrhagic fevers, discovering Sabiá and Guanarito viruses, the causative agents of Brazilian and Venezuelan hemorrhagic fevers.

He also researched dengue and its vaccines.

During Shope's time at Yale, YARU became the global repository for arboviruses.

He characterised Thottapalayam virus, later shown to be the first hantavirus, from an Indian shrew in 1971.

With Murphy and others, he discovered multiple viruses related to bluetongue, including bluetongue 20 virus, the first bluetongue-like virus from Australia.

The findings were published in 1992 as Emerging Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States, with Shope as the principal author, and the publication was swiftly recognised as groundbreaking.

It suggested that the success of vaccines and antibiotics had led to the threat of infectious diseases being underestimated.

After his retirement from Yale in 1995, Shope and his colleague Robert B. Tesh moved to the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Texas, where they founded a new arbovirus centre.

Shope subsequently held the university's John S. Dunn Distinguished Chair in Biodefense.

The virologist Charles Calisher described Shope as a "walking encyclopaedia on the arbovirus catalogue," and during his career Shope contributed to the discovery of hundreds of novel viruses – more than any person previously.

His research encompassed not only the areas of virology, tropical and emerging infectious diseases, but also epidemiology, vector biology and public health.

Calisher and emerging infectious disease specialist C. J. Peters highlighted his multidisciplinary approach, stating that "He brought the virus community together and served as a bridge between classical arbovirology and many other disciplines" including ecology, genetics and structural biology.

Epidemiologist and emerging infectious disease specialist Stephen S. Morse considered Shope to exemplify the approach of "integrating the laboratory and the epidemiological and being able to think broadly about the evolutionary issues as well as the specifics."

Shope initially studied the Australian disease then known as "epidemic polyarthritis" with S. G. Anderson, showing that it was caused by an alphavirus, later characterised as Ross River virus.

His interest in infectious diseases was stimulated by his military service in Malaysia, where he investigated fevers among army personnel and locals.

When he and Tesh moved to University of Texas Medical Branch in 1995, they brought the arbovirus collection – consisting of more than 4,000 strains of arbovirus and more than 1,000 other viral strains, as well as reagents such as antibodies – with them.

The collection is used by scientists internationally to identify virus strains.

At Galveston, Shope widened his focus to include bioterrorism, winning $3.7 million in funding to develop measures to counter the threat.

His group identified alphavirus, arenavirus and flavivirus as potential bioterrorist risks, and Shope worked with structural biologist David Gorenstein to develop new small-molecule antivirals targeted against these viruses.

Shope led a high-profile investigation, with Joshua Lederberg and Stanley Oaks, into the risks posed by emerging infectious diseases and the measures necessary to respond to them for the Institute of Medicine.