when was the first cure for tuberculosis found
History of tuberculosis In 1944 Albert Schatz, Elizabeth Bugie, and Selman Waksman isolated streptomycin produced by a bacterial strain Streptomyces griseus. Streptomycin was the first effective antibiotic against M. tuberculosis.[99] This discovery is generally considered the beginning of the modern era of tuberculosis, although the true revolution began some years later, in 1952, with the development of isoniazid, the first oral mycobactericidal drug.[99] The advent of rifampin in the 1970s hastened recovery times, and significantly reduced the number of tuberculosis cases until the 1980s.
Hepatitis B vaccine The road to the hepatitis B vaccine began in 1963 when American physician/geneticist Baruch Blumberg discovered what he called the "Australia Antigen" (now called HBsAg) in the serum of an Australian Aboriginal person.[34] In 1968, this protein was found to be part of the virus that causes "serum hepatitis" (hepatitis B) by virologist Alfred Prince.[35] The American microbiologist/vaccinologist Maurice Hilleman at Merck used three treatments (pepsin, urea and formaldehyde) of blood serum together with rigorous filtration to yield a product that could be used as a safe vaccine. Hilleman hypothesized that he could make an HBV vaccine by injecting patients with hepatitis B surface protein. In theory, this would be very safe, as these excess surface proteins lacked infectious viral DNA. The immune system, recognizing the surface proteins as foreign, would manufacture specially shaped antibodies, custom-made to bind to, and destroy, these proteins. Then, in the future, if the patient were infected with HBV, the immune system could promptly deploy protective antibodies, destroying the viruses before they could do any harm.[36]