The cause was complications from prostate cancer, said his son Rob Robbins. The Lasker Foundation described the two pairs as working on “parallel but separate tracks” to create the Hib meningitis vaccine that had entered widespread use by 1990. Dr. Robbins and his colleagues found a solution in a process called conjugation, in which a protein was bonded with the polysaccharide, thus rendering it more visible. He later founded a box and paper company with Dr. Robbins’s mother, raising Dr. Robbins and his siblings in an upwardly mobile home where education was prized. Such was the rarity of Hib meningitis.

Source: Washington Post December 20, 2019 02:26 UTC