資本家的告白

THE thing about Jian Zhou was that once he made up his mind, there was no changing it. Like his friend and fellow medical researcher Ian Frazer, the Chinese-born virologist was convinced the work they were doing in their Brisbane laboratory would create history.

And so it did: a world-first vaccine to protect women against the virus that causes most forms of cervical cancer. The breakthrough put Professor Frazer's name up in lights in the international scientific community, and made him the 2006 Australian of the Year.

His lingering regret is that Zhou did not live to share the rewards and accolades.

Today, Zhou's pivotal role in developing the vaccine will be formally recognised in a long-overdue commemorative service at state Parliament House in Brisbane, organised jointly by the Queensland Government and the Australian Chinese Foundation.

More than 300 people are expected to attend. Kevin Rudd has penned a tribute to the late researcher, describing how "tens of millions of women the world over" owe him a debt of gratitude. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has joined the Prime Minister in praising Zhou's life and work, and in lamenting how it was "tragically cut short".

But for Professor Frazer and Zhou's widow, Xiao-Yi Sun, the service will be bittersweet. In the cruellest of ironies, Zhou had invested what turned out to be his last hope not in medical science, but in traditional Chinese medicine.

The obstinacy he showed in the lab, persevering with Xiao-Yi, his partner in research as well as in marriage, and Professor Frazer long after others would have given up on the vaccine, drove him to a lonely death in China in March 1999. The circumstances are still not entirely clear. Xiao-Yi, 51, can hardly bring herself to speak of them, even now.

As a young man, Zhou had contracted hepatitis, a disease that was endemic in the part of southern China in which he grew up. From time to time, he would suffer bouts of what Professor Frazer calls "tiredness".

In January 1999, just as all that work in the lab was about to pay off, they attended a conference together in the US state of South Carolina. Zhou told his friend he was feeling unwell. When they returned home to Brisbane, Zhou, uncharacteristically, took time off work.

"He went back to China in the belief that maybe his problem could be sorted out by going to (traditional) Chinese doctors," Frazer recalled yesterday.

No one could talk him out of it. "He had obviously been to see a doctor (in Brisbane) and I don't know what ... went on," Frazer said. "Jian was the sort of person that ... once he made up his mind, that was it. He made it very clear to me that going to China was the best thing to do."

Xiao-Yi said she had no inkling her then 42-year-old husband was so desperately ill. Soon after arriving in China, he telephoned to say he was feeling unwell, though not worryingly so. "I thought it might be the flu, or something," she said yesterday, before meeting Frazer to finalise arrangements for today's service.

Within days, she received another call from China, this time from a hospital: Zhou was in a critical condition and not expected to survive. The cause of death was later reported to be toxic shock -- a diagnosis the medically trained Xiao-Yi is not happy with. "I still don't really know what happened," she said, her voice choked with emotion.

After Zhou's death, Frazer made sure Xiao-Yi and their son, Andreas, now 21, were looked after financially. The cervical cancer vaccine had made him a wealthy man even before the treatment, known as Gardasil, was licensed in the US in 2006. In Australia, it is now provided free to schoolgirls from the age of 12.

Under the complex, international licensing agreement, royalties are funnelled to Frazer through the University of Queensland, which incorporates his Brisbane research institute. He splits the take 50-50 with Xiao-Yi and Andreas.

Frazer has always gone out of his way to acknowledge that Zhou was co-inventor of the vaccine, and Xiao-Yi says she is grateful her husband's role is also receiving public recognition.

Her own contribution should not be overlooked, either. Having trained in medicine with Zhou at university in Wengzhou, southwestern China, she became his right arm in the laboratory after they married.

In terms of his own partnership with Zhou, Frazer said it was very much an equal one. "We basically had the same idea," he explained, which was to create a synthetic replica of the human papilloma virus, known as a virus-like particle.

Like most good ideas, theirs was breathtakingly simple: they would replicate the protein shell of the papilloma virus, minus its harmful core, to stir up the body's immune defences and neutralise the infection. But the task turned out to be extraordinarily complicated. Frazer said they were on the verge of giving up when Zhou suggested they should go back to basics and just combine two virus proteins in a test tube. Xiao-Yi thought it was a silly idea, "just a joke, really".

To their amazed delight, the experiment worked. By April 1991, the science of the vaccine was effectively complete.

What remained was for its effectiveness to be proved in clinical trials and the commercial complexities, according to Frazer, of "flogging it off".

"Jian was fortunate he lived long enough to realise that the technology that he had helped develop would probably lead to a vaccine for cervical cancer ... So he had a fair idea of what was likely to happen," he said.

Today's service at Parliament House, Brisbane, starts at 1pm.