The 2020 Nobel prize was won by three scientists for their discovery of hepatitis C.
British scientist Michael Houghton and US researchers Harvey Alter and Charles Rice win Nobel Prize in medicine for Hepatitis C Virus discovery.
The three scientists responsible for the discovery are British scientist Michael Houghton and US researchers Harvey Alter and Charles Rice. The Nobel Prize committee stated that their discoveries ultimately “saved millions of lives”.
The virus is a major cause of liver cancer and a major reason people require liver transplants, in the 1960s, there was huge concern that people receiving donated blood were getting chronic hepatitis (liver inflammation) from an unknown, mysterious disease. The Nobel Prize committee said a blood transfusion at the time was like “Russian roulette”.
Highly sensitive blood tests mean such cases have now been eliminated in many parts of the world, and effective antiviral drugs have also been developed.
The prize committee also stated “For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating Hepatitis C virus from the world,”
Although, the 70 million people are currently living with the virus, which still kills around 400,000 a year.
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The discovery of hepatitis A and B had been made in the 1960’s. But Prof Harvey Alter discovered that there was another mystery infection at work while studying transfusion patients at the US National Institutes of Health in 1972.
As patients were still getting sick he showed that transfusion of blood from an infected patient to a chimpanzee would lead them to developing the disease. The mysterious illness became known as “non-A, non-B” hepatitis in and the hunt was now on.
Prof Michael Houghton, while at the pharmaceutical firm Chiron, managed to isolate the genetic sequence of the virus in 1989. This showed it was a type of flavivirus and it was thus, named Hepatitis C.
And Prof Charles Rice, while at Washington University in St. Louis, applied the finishing touches in 1997. He injected a genetically engineered Hepatitis C virus into the liver of chimpanzees, which showed this could lead to hepatitis.
The secretary general of the Nobel committee, Prof Thomas Perlmann, said he could only contact Profs Alter and Rice to tell them news.
“They were definitely not sitting by the phone because I called them a couple of times before without any answer.
“But once I reached them, they were extremely surprised and they were really happy and speechless almost, so it was really fun to talk to them.”
Commenting on the announcement, Dr. Claire Bayntun, a clinical consultant in global public health and vice-president of Royal Society of Medicine, said the discovery was an “extraordinary achievement”.
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