Nobel Prize In Medicine Awarded To Scientists Who Discovered Hepatitis-C Virus
The award, which is regarded as the most prestigious in the field of science comes with a gold medal with prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor ($1,18,000) which will be split between the three awardees equally.
Last night, the Nobel Committee announced three winners for its Nobel Prize in the field of medicine. The three awardees were Harvey J Alter, Charles M Rice and Michael Houghton for their discovery of the Hepatitis C virus.
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This announcement was made by the head of the Nobel Committee, Thomas Perlmann in Stockholm, yesterday. The committee said in the announcement, "This year¡¯s Nobel Prize is awarded to three scientists who have made 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 2020 Nobel Prize laureates Harvey J Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M Rice made seminal discoveries that led to the identification of a novel virus, hepatitis C."
Nobel prize in medicine 2020
They added, ¡°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. 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.¡±
The award, which is regarded as the most prestigious in the field of science comes with a gold medal, along with prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor ($1,18,000) which will be split between the three awardees equally.
Nobel Committee
85-year-old Harvey James Alter, is an American medical researcher, virologist, and physician. Currently, he is the chief of the infectious disease division and the associate director for research of the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US.
Michael Houghton is a virologist by profession. He is currently Canada Excellence Research Chair in Virology and Li Ka Shing Professor of Virology at the University of Alberta where he is also Director of the Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute. Charles M Rice is a professor of virology at Rockefeller University.
