Today the Nobel Committee announces the Nobel Prize in the category of Medicine. This year’s Nobel Prize is jointly awarded to Harvey J. Alter of the U.S. National Institute of Health, Michael Houghton of the University of Alberta and Charles M. Rice of the Rockefeller University for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus. The first and foremost step in countering any disease is to identify the pathogen that is behind it. One can easily relate with this at this time of global pandemic. When cases of Covid-19 (at that time not names as such) began soaring scientists first identified the pathogen behind it.
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) causes Hepatitis C an infectious disease, and it primarily affects the liver. The initial symptoms present itself in the form of fatigue, fever, joint pain, nausea, abdominal pain, dark urine, itchy skin, yellow discoloration of sclera of eye and skin, called jaundice. It often leads to liver cirrhosis which develop into liver failure, liver cancer and dilated blood vessels in the esophagus. According to WHO reports there are around 71 million Hepatitis C infections around the world, causing around 400,000 deaths every year.
Initial Development
In 1960s scientists observed a large number of cases of hepatitis in patients receiving multiple blood transfusions. In 1967 Baruch Blumberg identified Hepatitis B virus as the cause of it, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in the year 1976.
Works of Harvey J. Alter
In the mid 1970s Harvey J. Alter and his team demonstrated that most of the post-transfusion are not caused due to Hepatitis A or B, which were previously thought of as the primary cause of it. Their work showed the presence of a third blood-borne viral pathogen that causes post transfusion liver disease. For this purpose, he used chimpanzees.
Identification of HCV Virus by Michael Houghton
During 1987-1988 Michael Houghton then working at Chiron Corporation with his collogues employed a new approach in molecular cloning, and identified a new RNA virus from the specimen collected from infected chimpanzees. It was named Hepatitis C virus.
Employment of Genetic Engineering to prove HCV, the cause post transfusion liver disease
Finally, Charles M. Rice and his team at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, with the help of genetic engineering, proved that Hepatitis C Virus is the cause of post transfusion liver disease.