Blumberg (Blumberg), Baruch( The American physician and scientist, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1976)
Comments for Blumberg (Blumberg), Baruch
Biography Blumberg (Blumberg), Baruch
genus. July 28, 1925 American physician and scientist Baruch Samuel Blumberg was born in New York, the family lawyer Meyer and Ida Blumberg Blumberg (Simonoff). The family had three children, and Baruch was the second child. In 1943, Mr.. He graduated from high school in Brooklyn and enlisted in the landing of the naval forces of the USA. Soon he was sent to study physics at Union College in Shenektadi (New York). In 1946, Mr.. B. was promoted to lieutenant and was discharged in the same year he received a bachelor's degree from Union College and enrolled in graduate school in mathematics at Columbia University. But the following year he was on the advice of his father moved to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University to study medicine. In 1951, Mr.. B. received a medical degree and became a medical intern at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. He then worked for two years in the department of arthritis at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, . where he studied the chemical properties of hyaluronic acid - an essential component of connective tissue, . performing, . particularly, . supporting and trophic function, . From 1955 to 1957. B. continued to investigate the hyaluronic acid is a graduate student in biochemistry at Balliol College, Oxford. Here he also began to explore the diversity of proteins in the human body. After receiving his doctorate at Oxford B. returned to the United States and enrolled in the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Bethesda (Maryland). Here, as head of Geographic Medicine and Genetics, he investigated the polymorphism of proteins from the inhabitants of different regions of the planet. In 1960, Mr.. joined by English scientist, Anthony Allison, with whom B. worked together in Oxford. B. became interested in the physiological differences between different human populations after his visit in 1957, Mr.. in Suriname, where he was struck by the difference in susceptibility to disease in different ethnic groups. Being engaged in studies of hyaluronic acid in Oxford, he mastered the modern methods of protein purification and discrimination on the basis of the smallest chemical differences, in particular the method of electrophoresis gel. B. decided to use these techniques to detect differences between proteins (polymorphism) in people with different genetic characteristics. In response to foreign agents or antigens, the human immune system produces antibodies. Antibodies are much more sensitive to the differences between proteins than the chemical methods, which used B. and Allison. Scientists realized that they can be used to detect polymorphism in natural mechanisms of which they had not previously thought. Subsequently B. recalled: 'We decided to test the hypothesis, . whereby patients, . which repeatedly transfused blood, . may produce antibodies against one or more polymorphic serum proteins (known as, . and unknown), . which they themselves were born, . but who were the donors'., . The work of B . and Allison used the blood of people with blood diseases such as hemophilia, anemia or leukemia. These patients often need blood transfusions every year dozens of different donors. Problem Explorers was, . to determine, . whether blood antibody precipitate (precipitation) of different antigens of serum (the liquid part of blood, . obtained after removal of the formed elements), . appropriate blood of different ethnic groups, . With these techniques they can provide great variety of plasma proteins. In 1963, Mr.. researchers made an unexpected discovery. They identified from the blood of patients with hemophilia, who lived in New York, antibodies that react only with one serum obtained from the Australian Aborigines. B. and his colleagues are not surprised by the fact, . that the Aboriginal, . belonging to a separate and isolated race, . different from other people, but they could not understand, . why a patient with hemophilia in New York met this so-called Australia antigen, . which, . believed, . available only to Aboriginals., . In 1964, Mr. . B. joined the Research Institute of cancer in Philadelphia and here continued to explore the distribution of Australian antigen. Together with his team, he found that this antigen is not as closely associated with membership of a particular ethnic group, as they assumed. If the Australia antigen was one of the variants of the natural human protein, it would remain in carriers of this protein for life. Therefore, when one of the subjects, who had no this antigen, after suffering liver disease, it appeared, B. realized that the issue here is not about the polymorphism of proteins and the relationship of antigen with a particular disease. By 1967, Mr.. B. and his staff were already convinced that the Australia antigen associated with hepatitis B virus that causes inflammation of the liver. With the 60-ies. hepatitis in the United States acquired the character of the epidemic, but in other countries, the disease still occurs frequently, hitting at that time about 100 million people worldwide. However, HBV is not able to identify. It is not grown in cell cultures of those types that were created by John Enders for studying polio, and struck a man and chimpanzee. Although it was established that hepatitis B can be transmitted through blood transfusions, to work B. there was no way to determine the presence of virus in the blood. Once B. established a link between the Australian antigen and hepatitis B, have developed programs to determine the virus conserved blood, thereby reducing the risk of one of the major complications of blood transfusions. . Prevention of serum hepatitis B was only the first important consequence of opening B . Initially, he and his colleagues assumed that Australia antigen is genetically predetermined variant of human proteins, because, if a person has this antigen, it keeps it for life. The majority of persons with hepatitis B develop antibodies against the outer protein shell of the virus (surface antigen - HBsAg), and as a result of people recovering. However, about one in 100 patients at the same time becoming infected with HIV. Although such people are outwardly healthy and virus antigen HBsAg and have them stored for decades after infection. 'We realized that the existence of the carrier provides the opportunity to develop an unusual method of vaccine production ", - wrote later B. The fact that it was possible to obtain immunizing antigen directly from the blood of carriers. Antigen HBsAg without the virus itself was isolated in carriers of hepatitis B virus, purified, and was friendly and effective vaccine. This natural hepatitis B vaccine was first marketed in 1982, but was extremely expensive due to the fact that the material for its production could only receive from a very small number of patients with hepatitis. At the same time, the success of D B. led to the creation of vaccines based on HBsAg, produced by bacteria, modified with the help of genetic engineering techniques. In 1976. B. with Carlton Gayduzekom was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and spread of infectious diseases'. In the study of carriers of hepatitis B virus, B. also obtained evidence that infection with hepatitis B virus can lead to liver cancer. During his scientific activity B. worked in many areas, and it seems to represents a new era in biomedicine, where the solution to a problem can be found only at the interface between immunology, virology, genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology. Since 1964, Mr.. B. - Deputy Director for Clinical Research of the Research Institute of Cancer in Philadelphia. In 1977. He became a professor of medicine and anthropology at Pennsylvania State University, and in 1983 ... 1984. He was a professor, a consultant at Oxford University. In 1954, Mr.. B. married to artist Jean Libsman, they have four children. In addition to the Nobel Prize, B. also won many other awards, t.ch. Prize Eppinger University of Freiburg (1973) and Prize in Physiology or Medicine Foundation Passau Passau (1974).
|