2020 Medicine Laureate Harvey Alter’s methodical investigati | The Nobel Prize
2020 Medicine Laureate Harvey Alter’s methodical investigations had defined a new, distinct form of chronic viral hepatitis, illness that became known as “non-A, non-B” hepatitis. The next step was to identify the novel virus.
All the traditional techniques for virus hunting were put to use but, in spite of this, the virus eluded isolation for over a decade. 2020 Medicine Laureate Michael Houghton (pictured), working for the pharmaceutical firm Chiron, undertook the arduous work needed to isolate the genetic sequence of the virus. Houghton and his co-workers created a collection of DNA fragments from nucleic acids found in the blood of an infected chimpanzee. The majority of these fragments came from the genome of the chimpanzee itself, but the researchers predicted that some would be derived from the unknown virus. On the assumption that antibodies against the virus would be present in blood taken from hepatitis patients, the investigators used patient sera to identify cloned viral DNA fragments encoding viral proteins. Following a comprehensive search, one positive clone was found. Further work showed that this clone was derived from a novel RNA virus belonging to the Flavivirus family and it was named Hepatitis C virus. The presence of antibodies in chronic hepatitis patients strongly implicated this virus as the missing agent.
Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton and Charlie Rice shared the 2020 Medicine Prize "for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus".
