Baruch Blumberg
(1925 - 2011)
Baruch Samuel Blumberg was a Jewish American doctor and recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Blumberg (born July 28, 1925; died April 5, 2011) was born in in New York
City. In 1943, he joined the U.S. Navy and finished
college under military sponsorship and left active duty
in 1946. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Physics
on the First (Columbia) Division at Bellevue Hospital
in lower New York. For the next two years, he spent
as a Clinical Fellow in Medicine at Columbia Presbyterian
at Union College New York and, in 1946, he entered Columbia
University for mathematical graduate studies. In 1947,
he enrolled in The College of Physicians and Surgeons
of Columbia University.
From 1951 to 1953, Blumberg worked as an assistant
resident Medical Center working in the Arthritis Division.
From 1955 to 1957, he was a graduate student at the
Department of Biochemistry at Oxford University, England,
and a member of Balliol College. From 1957 to 1964 he
worked at the National Institutes of Health. In 1964,
he transferred to the Institute of Cancer Research.
He received the 1976 Nobel
Prize in Medicine, along with D. Carleton
Gajdusek, for “discoveries concerning
new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination
of infectious diseases.”
Blumberg identified the Hepatitis B virus,
and later developed the diagnostic test
and vaccine for it.
The following press release from the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences describes Blumberg's work:
Baruch Blumberg was trained
as a geneticist and studied the variation
between certain types of proteins occurring
in the blood of different individuals. In
connection with these studies he found the
presence of a unique protein in the serum
of a patient with hemophilia, who had received
several transfusions, in tests against a
serum collected from an Australian aborigin.
This protein was called Australia antigen
and was first suspected to be some kind
of serum protein. However, during the years
of 1966-68 Blumberg could prove that Australia
antigen only appeared in connection with
and in some cases after the special form
of jaundice caused by infectious agents
(hepatitis) which previously had been named
inoculation or serum hepatitis. This disease
today is called hepatitis B. It was known
since about 1940 that there are two forms
of hepatitis. Besides hepatitis B there occurs
one infectious form, which today is called
hepatitis A. Blumberg's discovery of Australia
antigen was the starting point for an enormous
development over a decade of our knowledge
concerning hepatitis B infections. This
development is impressive not the least with
regard to the fact that the virus causing
the disease still today can not be cultivated
under laboratory conditions. This is normally
assumed to be a prerequisite for the characterization
of an infectious agent and the disease process
which it may cause. Since his original discovery
Blumberg has continued to be the leading
figure within the field of hepatitis research.
Important new knowledge within this field
can be summarized in the following way:
Australia antigen, now called HBs-antigen (s for surface)
has been shown to represent the outmost structure of
the virus, which causes hepatitis B infections However,
HBs-antigen normally occurs in serum as a small, independing
particle without infectious activity. Hepatitis B virus
represents a completely new group of viruses and distinguishes
itself distinctly from the infectious agent causing
hepatitis A.
Different variants of HBs-antigen have been shown
to occur which has allowed important epidemiological
studies. It has been clarified that e g the epidemic
occurring among cross country runners in Sweden in the
beginning of the 1960ies was caused by a type of hepatitis
B virus, which distinguishes itself from the virus which
during the last decade has circulated among drug abusers.
The infectious process in individuals, who have become
infected has been shown to take one of several different
courses. After either a symptomless infection or the
appearance of clear-cut disease 60 to 160 days after
infection the virus normally is removed from the organism.
However about 10 % of all hospitalized patients in industrialized
countries acquire a persistent (chronic) infection.
This implies that in the society as a whole about 0.1%
of all individuals are carriers of a hepatitis B virus
infection. For unknown reasons the corresponding figure
for certain developing countries is much higher, about
1 to 15 %. It has been estimated that in the whole world
there is more than 100 million people who are chronically
infected with hepatitis B virus.
These persons represent an important source for further
spreading of the virus. It is known since a long time
that transmission of the virus can occur in connection
with different medical treatments e g blood transfusions.
More recent data show that under certain circumstances
also oral and genital transmission may occur and further
that a pregnant woman may transmit the infection to
her fetus. However, not all individuals who are chronically
infected with hepatitis B virus are contagious.
Many carriers do not produce a complete infectious
virus. By use of modern techniques it has been possible
to distinguish those who are contagious and those who
are not. Carriers who have a contagious form of the
persistent infection show signs of liver damage, which
may occasionally be of a serious nature, whereas other
carriers appear healthy.
Today all blood donors are examined to determine a
possible occurrence of a persistent hepatitis B virus
infection. By elimination of all detectable carriers
the frequency of hepatitis caused by blood transfusion
has been reduced with at least 25%. The fact that the
reduction is not still greater partly is due to that
besides hepatitis A and B, there appears to be still
another form of hepatitis for which the designation
C has been proposed.
Regular gamma globulin efficiently prevents the occurrence
of hepatitis A infections, but does not have any effect
on hepatitis B virus infections. By the availability
of new test methods for hepatitis B virus and antibodies
against this virus it is today possible to select blood
donors for preparation of a special gamma globulin containing
a high concentration of antibodies against hepetitis
B virus. During recent years it has been shown that
this type of specific gamma globulin gives an efficient
protection against hepatitis B virus infections. Thus
possibilities are now available to eliminate a disease
which hitherto has caused considerable problems within
many sectors of medical care, e g in kidney dialysis
departments and transplantation units.
The occurrence of healthy
individuals who produce large quantities
of non-infectious hepatitis B virus products
has allowed possibilities for the development
of a completely new type of vaccine. The
production of this vaccine is not based
on virus produced in the laboratory but
instead on the purification of virus products
derived from serum of patients with a persistent
hepatitis B virus infection. A vaccine of
this kind has been shown to protect against
hepatitis B virus infections in chimpanzees
and recently also in humans.
Sources: Nobelprize.org,
Nobel
Prize Autobiography |