Trio win Nobel Medicine Prize for Hepatitis C discovery

Three scientists have shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus.

Nobel Committee member Patrik Ernfors sits in front of a screen displaying the winners of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, American Harvey Alter, left, Briton Michael Houghton and American Charles Rice, at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, on Monday. Picture: AFP

Three scientists have shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus.

The Nobel was awarded jointly to Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British scientist Michael Houghton in the Swedish capital on Monday.

The Nobel committee said that the trio’s work had helped to ­explain a major source of blood-borne hepatitis that could not be explained by the hepatitis A and B viruses, making possible blood tests and new medicines that had saved ­millions of lives.

“Thanks to their discovery, highly sensitive blood tests for the virus are now available and these have essentially eliminated post-transfusion hepatitis in many parts of the world, greatly improving global health,” the committee said.

“Their discovery also allowed the rapid development of anti­viral drugs directed at hepatitis C.

“For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus from the world population.”

Alter, a clinical scientist at a US National Institutes of Health blood bank, showed that the chronic form of hepatitis known as hepatitis C disease was blood-borne and was likely to be caused by a virus.

Years later, British-born viro­logist Houghton, then working for pharmaceutical company Chiron, found a way to clone the virus and identified antibodies created against it by the host’s immune system.

This led to the development of screening mechanisms to eliminate the virus in the blood supply.

Through genetic analysis, Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, researcher Rice characterised the virus and set scientists on a path to finding a cure.

The World Health Organisation estimates there are more than 70 million cases of hepatitis worldwide and 400,000 deaths each year.

The disease is chronic and a major cause of liver inflammation and cancer.

Houghton is currently the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Virology and the Li Ka Shing Professor of Virology at the University of Alberta.

Rice, born in 1952 in Sacramento, was in 2001-08 the scientific and executive director at the Centre for the Study of Hepatitis C at Rockefeller University, where he remains active.

The medicine prize carries particular significance this year because of the coronavirus ­pandemic, which has strongly highlighted the importance that medical research has for societies and economies around the world.

The prestigious award comes with a gold medal and prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor (more than $1.5m).

AP