AI for Protein Folding Wins the Chemistry Nobel : John Gilmartin

 

Chemistry Nobel goes to developers of AlphaFold AI that predicts protein structures

Click here for the article in Nature

This title might sound dull, predicting protein structures. It isn’t.

 In the 1990’s I was buying billions of doses of vaccines in Unicef, and Unicef had become the largest buyer/supplier of vaccines in the world.

We thought having Hepatitis B in our offering of low cost vaccines would be a good thing for children, there was data that liver cancers developed in adulthood were the result of viral hepatitis infections in infancy and under five year olds. At that time (1980’s thru 90’s) Hep B vaccine cost around $150 per fully immunized person. It was the most expensive vaccine in the world and was intended to sell to surgeons, dentists and medical staff in daily contact with possible blood borne disease.

The inventor of Hep B in its first licensed form was Maurice Hillelman, head of vaccine research at Merck where I was then a very junior supervisor
In the vaccine plant, Early 1970’s

To everyone’s surprise or shock, this vaccine became the first billion dollar vaccine product. The Merck marketing folks did not promote the vaccine, they thought it was a mistake to market it and that it would never become a widely used children’s vaccine.

Years later I found myself in Unicef managing the purchase of vaccines, and face to face with Maurice Hillelman who was then an emeritus and sent along to explain things to the the UN folks who wanted to buy their state of the art vaccine.

The key moment in our discussion was when Maurice explained to us that the key to developing his hepatitis vaccine was understanding how the protein was folded. “Anyone can synthesize this protein, but the real skill was understanding the folding” of that protein". Terrel Hill, then head of health program stopped Maurice, and commented, ‘we know about the folding, we need that vaccine for 25 cents a dose, are you reedy to supply?’

To my delight Maurice stopped talking, and the marketing boys from Merck did not erupt in protest. We had a quiet discussion about the scale of our funding, and the need for the vaccine. Within a couple years Merck became a donor of the vaccine which was fine, and the rest of the major vaccine manufacturers were bringing Hep B. as we all called it, in for less than a dollar a dose. It was available for 25 cents within five years of that discussion. China has an immense national manufacturing capacity today.

So, here’s an announcement of this years Nobel in Chemistry to a trio of AI reaseachers, two of whom work for Google, recognizing their breakthrough work in describing protein folding, that key step in the development of vaccines and so much else.

Unusual also in this announcement is two of the recipients are private sector researchers. Most Nobels are awarded to academic or public sector laboratory heads.