"The discovery of the Hepatitis C virus by this year’s Laureates laid the foundation for our current understanding about how the virus survives in its niche during the long chronic phase of the infection, and how liver disease develops. And importantly, it led to the development of highly effective anti-viral medicines that now cure the infection in almost all treated persons."[5]
Laureates
Seminal experiments by HJ Alter, M Houghton and CM Rice leading to the discovery of HCV as the causative agent of non-A, non-B hepatitis.
Alter was born in New York City[6] in a Jewish family.[7] He attended the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1956. In 1960, Alter obtained a medical degree from University of Rochester[8][9] and began a residency at Strong Memorial. Alters's post graduate training includes a rotation as a clinical associate at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, from December 1961 to June 1964;[10][7][11] a year of residency in medicine at University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington,[12] from July 1964 to June 1965; and work as a hematology fellow at Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, D.C., from July 1965 to June 1966.[10] He has been senior investigator in the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the NIH from July 1969 to present; chief of infectious diseases section at the department of transfusion medicine in the Clinical Center NIH from December 1972 to present; associate director for research at the department of transfusion medicine at the Clinical Center at NIH from January 1987 to present.[10] He was the recipient of 1992 Karl Landsteiner Memorial Award, the 2002 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award or his work leading to the discovery of the virus that causes hepatitis C, and 2013 Gairdner Foundation International Award.[13]
The following publications were the fundamental researches that motivated the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet to award the 2020 Prize to Alter, Houghton and Rice:[18]
Harvey J. Alter
Alter H.J., Holland P.V., Purcell R.H., Lander J.J., Feinstone S.M., Morrow A.G., Schmidt P.J. Posttransfusion hepatitis after exclusion of commercial and hepatitis-B antigen-positive donors. Ann Intern Med. 1972; 77:691-699.
Feinstone S.M., Kapikian A.Z., Purcell R.H., Alter H.J., Holland P.V. Transfusion-associated hepatitis not due to viral hepatitis type A or B. N Engl J Med. 1975; 292:767-770.
Alter H.J., Holland P.V., Morrow A.G., Purcell R.H., Feinstone S.M., Moritsugu Y. Clinical and serological analysis of transfusion-associated hepatitis. Lancet. 1975; 2:838-841.
Alter H.J., Purcell R.H., Holland P.V., Popper H. Transmissible agent in non-A, non-B hepatitis. Lancet. 1978; 1:459-463.
Michael Houghton
Choo Q.L., Kuo G., Weiner A.J., Overby L.R., Bradley D.W., Houghton M.Isolation of a cDNA clone derived from a blood-borne non-A, non-B viral hepatitis genome. Science. 1989; 244:359-362.
Charles M. Rice
Kolykhalov A.A., Agapov E.V., Blight K.J., Mihalik K., Feinstone S.M., Rice C.M.Transmission of hepatitis C by intrahepatic inoculation with transcribed RNA. Science. 1997; 277:570-574.
Collaborative work
Kuo G., Choo Q.L., Alter H.J., Gitnick G.L., Redeker A.G., Purcell R.H., Miyamura T., Dienstag J.L., Alter C.E., Stevens C.E., Tegtmeier G.E., Bonino F., Colombo M., Lee W.S., Kuo C., Berger K., Shuster J.R., Overby L.R., Bradley D.W., Houghton M.An essay for circulating antibodies to a major etiologic virus of human non-A, non-B hepatitis. Science. 1989; 244:362-364.
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