The first cancer vaccine

Hepatitis B is a tiny virus that causes hundreds of thousands of deaths from liver disease and cancer each year. The vaccine against it became the first of many milestones: it was the first viral protein subunit vaccine, the first recombinant vaccine, and the first vaccine to prevent a type of cancer.
In this episode, Jacob and Saloni follow the trail of strange jaundice outbreaks that scientists traced to a stealthy liver virus, how scientists turned one viral surface protein into a lifesaving shot for newborns, and how it was all built upon breakthroughs in immunology.
Hard Drugs is a new podcast from Works in Progress and Coefficient Giving about medical innovation presented by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.

You can watch or listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
Saloni’s substack newsletter: scientificdiscovery.dev

Jacob’s blog: blog.jacobtrefethen.com
Books:
• Paul Offit (2007) Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases
• Arthur M Silverstein (2009) A history of immunology
• Ronald W Ellis (1993) Hepatitis B Vaccines in Clinical Practice
• Sally Smith Hughes (2011) Genentech: The beginnings of biotech

Articles:
• Timothy M. Block et al. (2016) A historical perspective on the discovery and elucidation of the hepatitis B virus doi.org/10.1016/j.antiviral.2016.04.012
• Naijuan Yao et al. (2022) Incidence of mother-to-child transmission of hepatitis B in relation to maternal peripartum antiviral prophylaxis: A systematic review and meta-analysis doi.org/10.1111/aogs.14448
• Jill Koshiol et al. (2019) Beasley’s 1981 paper: The power of a well-designed cohort study to drive liver cancer research and prevention pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5866222
• William J. McAleer et al. (1984) Human hepatitis B vaccine from recombinant yeast doi.org/10.1038/307178a0
• Chunfeng Qu et al. (2014) Efficacy of Neonatal HBV Vaccination on Liver Cancer and Other Liver Diseases over 30-Year Follow-up of the Qidong Hepatitis B Intervention Study: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001774
• Anthony R Rees (2020) Understanding the human antibody repertoire doi.org/10.1080/19420862.2020.1729683
Correction: Urea was mentioned as a protein, but is actually the product of a protein breakdown process, not a protein itself.
Acknowledgements:
• Aria Babu, editor at Works in Progress
• Graham Bessellieu, video editor
• Abhishaike Mahajan, cover art
• Atalanta Arden-Miller, art direction
• David Hackett, composer
Works in Progress & Coefficient Giving