Career
Jian Zhou received his medical degree from South China’s Wenzhou Medical College near Shanghai. The two considered the problem of developing a vaccine for Human papillomavirus – a virus that cannot be cultured without living tissue. Frazer convinced Zhou to join him at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, and in 1990 they began to use molecular biology to synthesize particles in vitro that could mimic the virus.
In March 1991 Zhou"s wife and fellow researcher, Xiao-Yi Sun, assembled by Zhou"s instructions two proteins into a virus-like particle (VLP), resembling the Human papillomavirus shell, from which Human papillomavirus vaccine would ultimately be made.
The vaccine completely protects unexposed women against four Human papillomavirus strains responsible for 70% of cervical cancers, which kill about 250,000 women annually. Frazer and Zhou filed a provisional patent in June 1991 and began work on developing the vaccine within UQ. To finance clinical trials, Australian medical company Computer Science Laboratory, and later Merck, were sold partial patents.
(Computer Science Laboratory has the exclusive license to sell Gardasil in New Zealand and Australia, Merck the license elsewhere) GlaxoSmithKline independently used the same VLP-approach to develop Cervarix, under a later United States patent, licensing Frazer"s intellectual property in 2005. In March 1999, Zhou died due to hepatitis, a disease he had contracted as a young man in native South East China.
In 2008, Zhou"s contribution to his efforts in research, including his work with the Gardasil vaccine, were formally recognised with a commemorative service attended by over 300 people, and included a written tribute from the Australian Prime Minister of the time, Kevin Rudd in Brisbane, Australia.
Zhou et al. “Increased Expression of Vaccinia Recombinant HVP 16 L1 and L2 ORF Proteins in Epithelium Cells Is Sufficient for Assembly of HVP Virion Like Particles”, J. General Virology, 1990, pp. 2185–2190, Volume
71. Zhou et al. “Increased Antibody Responses to Human Papilloma Virus Type 16 L1 Protein Expressed by Recombinant Vaccine Virus Lacking Serine Protease Inhibitor Genes”, Chemical Abstracts, November
5, 1990, Volume 13, Number. 19
Zhou et al. “Human Pappilomavirus Type 16 Virions Produced by Recombinant Viccinia Virus”, Abstract from 1991 Papilloma Virus Workshop (Seattle, Washington 1991)
J. Zhou, X.Y. Sun, Doctorate.J. Stenzel, I.H. Frazer, “Expression of Vaccinia Recombinant Human papillomavirus 16 L1 and L2 ORF Proteins in Epithelial Cells”, 185 J. Virology 251 (1991), pp 251–257.