Technology, translated from English, consists of two roots: "art or skill" and "knowledge" in Greek. Technology is knowledge about practical skills and arts and crafts, and the practical application of knowledge is studied for the purpose of invention. Its achievements can often be patented or published in research journals, but they may not become products immediately. From conceptual model or design to product molding, an invention needs to go through a lot of technical development work, including improving design and optimizing manufacturing process or flow.
It is a long process from scientific discovery to technological invention to product formation. This process is not linear and needs many cycles, feedback and repetition. It also requires scientific and technical personnel engaged in basic research, applied research and technological development to work in a down-to-earth manner, which often takes more than ten years or even decades.
Let's review an example of an unexpected discovery in basic scientific research that brought important clinical application: hepatitis B vaccine, which is the first vaccine produced by DNA recombinant biotechnology. The core of this technology is the expression of hepatitis B virus surface antigen by yeast, which is the crystallization of decades of basic research, applied research and technical development by researchers from many countries.
Since it was discovered in the 1940s that blood can spread hepatitis B, medical scientists began to look for the pathogenic microorganisms that cause hepatitis B, but it has been used for more than 20 years without results. It was not until the 1960s that baruch blumberg, an expert in internal medicine and biochemistry, changed this state. At that time, Bloomberg worked at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His interest is not hepatitis, but a basic problem: the relationship between genetic polymorphism of serum antigens and disease susceptibility. At the beginning of 1966, an accidental discovery led Blumberg and his collaborators to consider the relationship between Australian antigen (now called hepatitis B surface antigen) and hepatitis. After doing more experiments, Blumberg and others published a paper at the end of 1966, suggesting that Australian antigen is closely related to acute viral hepatitis and may be transmitted through blood transfusion.
More research, including the work done by Japanese scientists to confirm that blood transfusion can infect Australian antigens, soon confirmed the conclusion that hepatitis B is caused by viruses related to Australian antigens. Later, Blumberg and his colleagues put forward a new idea, using Australian antigen instead of the whole virus as a vaccine. They applied for patents in June 1969 and June 10, and obtained the patent right granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in June 1972.
Bloomberg won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for his work on Australian antigens. In his speech at the Nobel Prize ceremony, he said, "The history of finding the relationship between hepatitis B and Australian antigens shows that it is impossible for me to make a plan to find the cause of hepatitis B at the beginning of my research. This kind of experience does not support setting goals to guide basic research to solve biological problems. "
The idea of using a subunit of human blood virus as vaccine put forward by Blumberg et al. is completely new. Researchers at Merck Institute believe that this idea is of great significance to the preparation of vaccines. 197 1 year, they obtained the permission of Bloomberg research institute and started the application research of hepatitis B vaccine. After years of research and experiments, the product of purifying hepatitis B surface antigen from blood to prepare hepatitis B vaccine was finally developed. The vaccine can provide more than 90% hepatitis B immunity. Vaccines produced with blood have been put into use 198 1 year, but they cannot be produced in large quantities with blood. First, the source of blood is limited, and second, blood is easily contaminated by other viruses.
1977, William Rutter of the University of California and others put forward the idea of producing HBsAg by DNA recombination technology, but Rutter and others failed to produce HBsAg by DNA recombination with several bacterial systems (including Escherichia coli). However, a basic research scientist who knew nothing about hepatitis B vaccine helped a lot.
198 1 year, Benjamin Hall of the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, published a paper in Nature, describing the model system they invented to produce human protein by yeast. Rutter et al. immediately cooperated with Hall et al. to successfully produce human hepatitis B surface antigen protein using recombinant yeast DNA. Merck Pharmaceuticals later switched to yeast DNA recombination technology to mass-produce hepatitis B vaccine, which was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on 1986 and put into the market. At the end of 1985, Root et al. submitted a patent application for the technology of "synthesizing human virus antigen with yeast" to the US Patent and Trademark Office, and obtained the patent right in September 1988.
It took about 17 years from 1969 put forward the idea of using hepatitis B surface antigen as vaccine to 1986 when the US FDA approved the mass production of hepatitis B vaccine with yeast and put it on the market. If it were not for the help of the basic scientific research achievements of yeast transcription in 10, the technical development of vaccine would probably take longer. Prior to this, there were more than 30 years of scientific research to find hepatitis B virus. It can be seen that innovation is based on the accumulation of applied research results of basic science and technology for decades. Leaders of some domestic government agencies and enterprises often hope to "innovate" during their term of office-this only shows that they don't know what real innovation is and the long process from science to technology to products.
Some domestic expressions, such as "encouraging private scientific research", are also manifestations of scientific and technological confusion. As a knowledge system, modern science has accumulated for more than 500 years, and it is difficult for "folk scientists" without formal education and training to do real science. But it is right to encourage folk technological inventions. The four great inventions in ancient China were all folk technological inventions, and now there may be folk technological inventions, such as a better mousetrap.