The 2020 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology for the Discovery of Hepatitis C Virus: A Triumph of Curiosity and Persistence

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.