Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to three scientists whose groundbreaking research ultimately saved millions of lives.
Animation still of the Hepatitis C virus, an infectious agent that causes Hepatitis C in humans (source: Wikimedia Commons).
The 2020 Nobel prize in Medicine or Physiology has been awarded to a US-UK trio who discovered the virus Hepatitis C, a leading cause of liver disease that kills 400,000 people a year.
The winners are scientists Harvey J Alter, Charles M Rice and Michael Houghton from the US National Institutes of Health in Maryland, Rockefeller University in New York, and the University of Alberta in Canada, respectively. Their winnings, 10m Swedish kronor (£870,000), will be distributed evenly among them.
When announcing the winners on Monday, the Nobel Assembly stated that the scientists “made a decisive contribution to the fight against blood borne hepatitis” and that their research ultimately “saved millions of lives”.
The Discovery of Hepatitis C
In the 1960s, there had been a serious concern over the number of people receiving blood transfusions who went on to develop chronic hepatitis (liver inflammation). Hepatitis A and B viruses had already been discovered, but the cause of a large majority of blood-borne hepatitis cases was still unknown.
Professor Harvey J. Alter was the first to discover that there was another, mysterious infectious agent besides Hepatitis A and B viruses causing chronic hepatitis. Whilst studying the incidence of hepatitis in patients who had received blood transfusions, Alter and colleagues found that there were many cases remaining that tested negative for both Hepatitis A and B viruses. Blood from these patients was also found to infect chimpanzees, who then developed the disease. Further studies indicated that the mysterious infectious agent was a virus, following the identification of viral features.
It would not be until a decade later, through the work of British virologist Professor Michael Houghton, that the Hepatitis C virus would be identified. Houghton and colleagues were the first to isolate the genetic sequence of the virus, using nucleic acids from the blood of an infected chimpanzee. The virus, which was found to be an RNA virus belonging to the Flavivirus family, was subsequently named the ‘Hepatitis C virus’.
One question remained, however; was this virus alone sufficient to cause hepatitis? Professor Charles Rice and co-workers would answer this in 1997. Through genetic engineering, Rice was able to inject an RNA variant of the Hepatitis C virus into the liver of chimpanzees. Following injection, pathological changes akin to those observed in humans with the disease was noted. Rice’s work was the last piece of the puzzle; the final proof that the Hepatitis C virus alone could cause chronic hepatitis, as observed in cases where the infected patient had received a blood transfusion.
Impact of Research
The discovery of the Hepatitis C virus was a historic breakthrough for the fight against viral infections. The work of Alter, Houghton and Rice enabled the development of effective treatment and screening of blood transfusions, largely eliminating post-transfusion hepatitis in many areas. It is due to their efforts that the disease can now be cured. As Dr Graham Cook, the NIHR professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College London, puts it “The discovery was crucial in defining the fact that there was this other virus that was so important, particularly for transfusion-related infections…[we have since] seen a tremendous explosion in our understanding of the virus, to the point that we are now talking about eliminating hepatitis C.”