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The 2020 Nobel Prize in Biomedical Sciences was awarded to three American and British scientists, for their achievements in the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, helping to save millions of lives.
The three scientists are Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles Rice.
All three were honored for “their decisive contribution in the fight against blood-borne hepatitis, a global health problem that causes cirrhosis and end-stage liver cancer,” according to the Commission. Nobel.
Photo of three scientists awarded the Nobel Prize in Biomedical Sciences, during the award ceremony on October 5 in Sweden. Photo: AP
In announcing the award today, the Nobel Committee emphasized that the research of three scientists has helped unravel the cause of blood-borne hepatitis, which cannot be explained by the hepatitis A and B viruses. Their work paved the way for blood tests to detect disease and make medicines, saving millions of lives.
“Thanks to their findings, high-sensitivity virus blood test kits have become popular, helping to repel hepatitis in many parts of the world, significantly improving human health,” the Commission said. You have paragraphs.
“Their findings also help generate antiviral drugs for hepatitis C,” the statement said. “For the first time in history, the disease can be cured, raising the hope of eliminating hepatitis C for humanity.”
The World Health Organization estimates that each year 70 million people become infected and 400,000 die from hepatitis-related diseases.
Alter was born in 1935 in New York, conducting research on the hepatitis C virus at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, where he currently works.
Rice was born in 1952 in California. He studies hepatitis at Washington University in St Louis, now at Rockefeller University in New York.
Houghton was born in 1950 in England. She did research in California before moving to the University of Alberta in Canada.
Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the Nobel Committee, said he contacted two of the three winners, Alter and Rice.
“I had to call several times to see them,” Perlmann said. “They were very surprised and very, very happy.”
The process of detecting the hepatitis C virus by scientists is divided into three phases. Harvey Alter initially collected blood samples from the National Institutes of Health blood bank. He and his colleagues found that although transfusions do not contain the hepatitis B virus, healthy people can become infected with hepatitis C. The pathogen can even be transmitted from person to monkey.
This stage laid the foundation for Michael Houghton’s work a few years later. He and his colleagues directly cloned the hepatitis C virus, successfully in 1989. Professor Perlmann called it the breakthrough in medicine. Finally, the work of Charles Rice explains how viruses are transmitted from humans to monkeys.
Before that, scientist Brooke Bloomberg also won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1976 for discovering the hepatitis B virus.
The Nobel Prize in Medicine is the first award to be announced annually, for outstanding achievement in the fields of life sciences and medicine. Among those eligible to submit proposals for the Nobel Prize in Biomedicine are members of the Karolinska Institute, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the winners in this category, the Nobel Council believes. adjustment…
Last year, the award went to scientists William Kaelin, Gregg Semenza, and Peter Ratcliffe. Two are from the United States and one is from England. The authors studied how cells perceive and adapt to oxygen levels in the body. The finding lays the foundation for understanding how oxygen levels affect the metabolic and physiological functions of cells.
The most prestigious Nobel Prize in the world is awarded in the fields of science, economics and peacebuilding. The award consists of a gold medal and 10 million Swedish crowns (equivalent to 1,118,000 million dollars), thanks to the legacy of the founder of the prize, inventor Alfred Nobel.
The Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace and Economics will be announced in the coming days.
Thuc Linh
