'"Australian antigen' was the Rosetta stone for unraveling the nature of the hepatitis viruses."
Robert H. Purcell, National Institute of Health
There are few people who can be said to have saved the lives of millions, but American scientist Dr. Baruch Blumberg (b. 1925) is one of them. In the 1960s he and his colleagues were screening aboriginal blood for diseases when they found a rare protein. They named it the "Australian antigen" and investigated whether it also occurred elsewhere in the world. It turned out to be uncommon in Americans but much more prevalent in Asians, Africans, and some Europeans. They discovered it-was also found in leukemia sufferers who were receiving regular blood transfusions.
Further population studies pointed to the antigen being part of a relatively unknown virus that caused a particularly virulent form of hepatitis—hepatitis B. Hepatitis B is a serious disease that attacks the liver causing cirrhosis (scarring), often leading to liver cancer and liver failure.
The fact that they knew this protein was linked to the virus meant they could test for it, which proved especially useful in screening donated blood and reducing the risk of hepatitis B being transmitted by blood transfusion. Blumberg and his team then started work on harvesting the outer coat of the virus from the blood of chronic carriers; this was a key step toward developing a working vaccine. Blumberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976.
