Baruch "Barry" Blumberg, a multifaceted researcher who shared the 1976 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for his work on infectious viral diseases, died on Tuesday (April 5) of an apparent heart attack while attending a conference on astrobiology in California. He was 85 years old.
Blumberg identified the hepatitis B virus (HBV) in the 1960s -- long before the advent of genomic sequencing and DNA sequencing technology -- travelling for years to collect blood samples from different ethnic groups around the globe. His journeys led him to Australia where, in the blood of an aborigine, he found what he'd later identify as the surface antigen of the virus. Blumberg would go on to help develop diagnostic tests and a vaccine that would drastically reduce the spread of hepatitis B, a debilitating liver disease. Chronic hepatitis B infection is also known to cause liver cancer.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Baruch Blumberg dies - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences
Author: Bob Grant
