Baruch Blumberg American physician and scientist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1976 (together with Carlton Gajduzek). Date of Birth: 28.07.1925 Country: USA

1. Baruch S. Blumberg: Biography of an American Physician and Scientist
2. Early Life and Education
3. Medical Career and Research
4. Contributions and Legacy

Baruch S. Blumberg: Biography of an American Physician and Scientist

Baruch S. Blumberg was an American physician and scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976. His groundbreaking discoveries revolutionized the understanding of infectious diseases and led to the development of vaccines.

Early Life and Education

Blumberg received his initial education at a yeshiva, a Jewish religious school. After graduating in 1943, he was drafted into the United States Navy during World War II. Following his discharge in 1946, his love for ships and the sea remained a constant throughout his life. In the same year, he earned a bachelor's degree from Union College in New York and enrolled in the mathematics department at Columbia University. However, at the insistence of his father, he transferred to the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in 1947. The college emphasized the study of fundamental sciences and scientific research. Blumberg later recalled in his autobiography that they only saw their first patient during their third year of study.

Medical Career and Research

After completing his third year, Blumberg spent a summer in Moengo, a small mining town in northern Suriname, at the suggestion of Professor Harold Brown, a parasitology expert. During his summer practice, he delivered babies, treated patients, and conducted research on the health conditions of the local population. His work in Moengo yielded the first statistical data on malaria. Blumberg graduated from college in 1951 and worked as an intern at Bellevue Hospital in New York City for two years. He described this period as an amazing time when medical insurance was not widely available, so the hospital treated patients from low-income backgrounds. The doctors took pride in providing necessary care to everyone who sought help. Blumberg believed that this experience at Bellevue taught him that the goal of scientific research should be to alleviate human suffering.

From 1953 to 1955, Blumberg worked at the Presbyterian Hospital of Columbia University, specializing in arthritis under the guidance of Dr. Charles A. Ragan. He also conducted research on hyaluronic acid, a polysaccharide found in the extracellular matrix of connective tissues in vertebrates. In 1955, he pursued a doctoral degree in biochemistry at the University of Oxford in England. His dissertation focused on the physical and biochemical characteristics of hyaluronic acid. During his time at Oxford, Blumberg met Anthony Allison, who introduced him to the concept of polymorphism, the existence of multiple morphologically distinct forms within a single species.

In 1957, Blumberg returned to the United States and joined the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. In the same year, he went on his first official trip to Nigeria. He and his team collected blood samples from various ethnic groups, including the nomadic Fulani people, to study inherited polymorphism in serum proteins and hemoglobin. However, chemical methods were insufficient to identify polymorphism in individuals from different ethnic groups. Blumberg used the mechanism created by nature itself. When the human body is invaded by foreign substances, it produces antibodies that are more sensitive to differences between proteins than the most advanced laboratory reagents available at that time. He hypothesized that repeated blood transfusions from different donors could lead to the production of antibodies against polymorphic proteins that the recipient lacked at birth but were present in the donors' blood. The challenge was to determine whether these antibodies would cause antigen precipitation in various serum samples from individuals representing different ethnic groups. Blumberg's team successfully isolated different variants of major plasma proteins.

In 1963, they discovered antibodies in the blood of a New York resident with hemophilia that only reacted with serum obtained from an Australian Aboriginal individual. This raised the question of how the so-called Australian antigen could be found in a New York resident since it was believed to be unique to Aboriginal populations. In 1963, Blumberg moved to the Fox Chase Cancer Research Institute in Philadelphia, where he continued studying the Australian antigen. He established that the Australian antigen was not an inherited antigen but one acquired during liver disease. In 1967, they provided evidence linking the Australian antigen to the hepatitis B virus, which causes liver disease.

Contributions and Legacy

In the late 1960s, a global epidemic of hepatitis broke out, but no one had been able to identify the hepatitis B virus. It was known that infection occurred during blood transfusions, but there were no methods to detect the virus in blood. After Blumberg's discovery, techniques were developed to determine the presence of the virus in stored blood, significantly reducing the risk of infection during transfusions. Additionally, Blumberg found that individuals who had recovered from hepatitis B developed antibodies against the virus's outer shell. However, one in every hundred patients became a carrier, harboring both the virus and the antigens in their bodies for many years. This discovery paved the way for the production of vaccines using antigens obtained directly from carriers' blood. A natural vaccine for hepatitis B was developed and became available for sale in 1982. Although it was costly to produce, Blumberg's discovery propelled the field of genetic engineering-based vaccines.

In 1976, Baruch Blumberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases."

After receiving the Nobel Prize, Blumberg assumed a professorship at the University of Pennsylvania in 1977. From 1983 to 1984, he served as a professor-consultant at the University of Oxford.

Among his other awards, Blumberg received the Eppinger Prize from the University of Freiburg in 1973 and the Passano Award in Medicine from the Passano Foundation in 1974.

His notable publications include "Australia Antigen and Hepatitis" (Cleveland, OH: Chemical Rubber Co, 1972) and "Hepatitis B: The Virus, the Disease, and the Vaccine" (New York: Plenum Press, 1984).