2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Unlocking the Secrets of the Liver and Hepatitis C

5 Outubro 2020

• Physiology or Medicine
• Nobel Prize
• Hepatitis C
• Virus
• Liver

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice, for their discoveries concerning the hepatitis C virus.

The three laureates conducted groundbreaking research that led to the identification of the hepatitis C virus, an advancement that revolutionized the treatment of this disease and saved millions of lives.

In the 1970s, Harvey Alter, of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), was studying non-A, non-B hepatitis, a mysterious form of hepatitis that caused chronic inflammation of the liver and, in some cases, led to cirrhosis and cancer.

Alter discovered that non-A, non-B hepatitis was highly contagious and transmitted through blood, but the cause of the disease remained unknown.

In the mid-1980s, Michael Houghton, who worked for the pharmaceutical company Chiron Corporation, along with his team, began a systematic search for the non-A, non-B hepatitis virus, using innovative gene cloning techniques.

After years of research, Houghton and his team were finally able to isolate and identify the virus, which was named the hepatitis C virus (HCV).

With the virus identified, Charles Rice, of Rockefeller University, took a crucial step toward the development of effective treatments. Rice and his team demonstrated that HCV could replicate in cultured cells in the laboratory, which paved the way for testing new drugs and therapies.

The discovery of HCV and the development of effective treatments transformed the fight against this disease.

Before the discovery of the virus, hepatitis C was a silent threat, as it often showed no symptoms, but caused irreversible damage to the liver.

Today, thanks to the research of Alter, Houghton, and Rice, hepatitis C has become a curable disease, with direct-acting therapies capable of eliminating the virus from the body in most cases.

The 2020 Nobel Prize recognizes the crucial impact of these three researchers’ discoveries, which led to the development of effective treatments for hepatitis C, saving millions of lives and transforming the global health landscape.