Nobel Prize in Medicine 2020 awarded to 3 scientists 'for discovery of Hepatitis C virus'

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded jointly to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice “for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus.” The Nobel Foundation announced that the Nobel Prize has been awarded to the three scientists for making a decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis, a major global health problem that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer in people around the world.

The foundation stated that the 2020 Medicine Laureates’ discoveries revealed the cause of the remaining cases of chronic hepatitis and made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives. According to the Nobel Foundation, Alter’s methodical studies of transfusion-associated hepatitis demonstrated that an unknown virus was a common cause of chronic hepatitis. While Houghton used an untested strategy to isolate the genome of the new virus that was named the Hepatitis C virus, Rice provided the final evidence showing that Hepatitis C virus alone could cause hepatitis, the foundation added. 

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Life and career

Alter was born in 1935 in New York and joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a clinical associate in 1961 after receiving his medical degree at the University of Rochester Medical School, and training in internal medicine at Strong Memorial Hospital and at the University Hospitals of Seattle. He spent several years at Georgetown University before returning to NIH in 1969 to join the Clinical Center’s Department of Transfusion Medicine as a senior investigator.

UK-born Houghton received his PhD degree in 1977 from King’s College London. He is currently a Canada Excellence Research Chair in Virology and the Li Ka Shing Professor of Virology at the University of Alberta where he is also Director of the Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute. Rice was born in 1952 in Sacramento and received his PhD degree in 1981 from the California Institute of Technology where he also trained as a postdoctoral fellow between 1981-1985. During 2001-2018, he was the Scientific and Executive Director, Center for the Study of Hepatitis C at Rockefeller University where he remains active.

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