The prize Nobel for medicine it was assigned to the British Michael Houghton and the Americans Harvey Alter and Charles Rice, who discovered the HCV virus, the cause of hepatitis C, and allowed the development of tests and medicines. Hcv is responsible for one of the largest epidemics in the world. According to the WHO, it affects 70 million people and kills 400,000 every year. It is a chronic disease that causes cirrhosis and can lead to cancer. “Thanks to their studies – is the reason for the award – it has been possible to develop blood tests and medicines that have saved millions of lives”. With serological tests, the risk of infected transfusions is now practically eliminated. “The discovery – continues the motivation – has allowed the rapid development of antiviral drugs. For the first time in history today the disease can be cured. We can also hope to eradicate it from the world”.
This year’s award has no direct ties to the coronavirus pandemic, but it encourages us to be optimistic and reminds us how insidious a virus can be capable of hiding itself in the body without giving immediate symptoms. By keeping its host healthy for years or decades, the hepatitis virus is one of the most efficient at transmitting among humans. Even the coronavirus, at least as regards the share of asymptomatic people, has basically adopted a similar strategy.
Alter is 85 years old. “Seeing so many people healed is exciting,” he commented after the news. He was born and graduated in New York. He spent his life as a researcher always in the United States, at the National Institutes of Health (Nih) and for a short time at Georgetown University. Rice is 68 years old. He was born in Sacramento and since 2001 teaches at Rockefeller University in New York, where until 2018 he directed the Hepatitis C Research Center. The British Houghton graduated in 1977 from King’s College London and later worked for the companies Searle & Company and Chiron. Since 2010 taught at the University of Alberta. Alter’s first studies on the hepatitis C virus date back to the 1970s, when diseases similar to hepatitis A and B, transmitted by blood transfusions, were noted, without it being possible to understand which microorganism was responsible. It wasn’t until 1989 that Houghton was the first to complete the genetic sequence of the virus, while Rice solved the difficult puzzle of its replication mechanism. After undoing this knot, the first effective drug, sofosbuvir, appeared about ten years ago.
The winners are awarded a gold medal and € 940,000 to be divided among the winners. But this year, due to a pandemic, the traditional, very sumptuous, award ceremony by the King of Sweden will not take place. It is only postponed to next year: the Nobel committee is sure that the pandemic will be over by then. Last year the award went to William Kaelin, Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza, two Americans and one British. They had discovered the mechanism by which cells react to oxygen deficiency. The prize for Physics will be announced on Tuesday, and on Wednesday for Chemistry. Thursday will be the turn of Literature and Friday of Peace.