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Abstract Details
The 2020 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology for the Discovery of Hepatitis C Virus: A Triumph of Curiosity and Persistence
Hepatology. 2021 Mar 30. doi: 10.1002/hep.31830. Online ahead of print.
Marc G Ghany1, Anna S F Lok2, Jules L Dienstag3, Stephen M Feinstone1, Jay H Hoofnagle4, T Jake Liang1, Leonard B Seeff5, David E Cohen6, Jorge A Bezerra7, Raymond T Chung3
Author information
1Liver Diseases Branch, National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda.
2Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
3Gastrointestinal Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston.
4Liver Diseases Research Branch, National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda.
5Einstein Healthcare Network, Philadelphia.
6Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Weill Cornell Medical College.
7Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Nutrition of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati.
Abstract
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology was awarded to Drs. Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles Rice for their contributions to the discovery and characterization of the hepatitis C virus (HCV), a small, enveloped, positive-sense RNA virus belonging to the genus Hepacivirus within the Flaviviridae family. Chronic HCV infection is a leading cause of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma worldwide and an important contributor to global mortality. Dr. Harvey Alter, a hematologist at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, along with his long-term collaborator, Bob Purcell in NIAID, recognized that most cases of posttransfusion hepatitis were unrelated to hepatitis A virus (HAV) or hepatitis B virus (HBV)-hence the term non-A, non-B hepatitis (NANBH)-and showed the NANBH agent was transmissible experimentally.