Identification of the virus dramatically reduced infections through blood transfusions
Three virologists have won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus.
Harvey Alter, of the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., Michael Houghton, who is now at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and Charles Rice, now of The Rockefeller University in New York City, will split the prize of 10 million Swedish kronor, or more than $1.1 million, the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute.
“This is a bit overdue,” says Dennis Brown, chief science officer of the American Physiological Society. It often takes decades before scientific achievements are recognized by the Nobel committee. One reason for the recognition this year may be COVID-19, Brown says. “This keeps virology and viruses in the public eye,” he says. “It might be a push to put science at the forefront, to say when we put money into this and when we have well-funded people working on these viruses, we can actually do something about them.”
