2020 Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine and Physiology
Have you ever thought about the mad scientists behind the everyday science that you learn about in school, or perhaps about who these scientists really are? Rest assured, they are definitely not “mad” but they are intelligent and inspiring people who are essential in developing new scientific discoveries in hopes of uncovering the many unknown facets of the world.
Especially within medicine, there is still so much that we have yet to learn and discover, and it is thanks to amazing scientists and researchers who dedicate themselves to discover new information about how the human body works, that we are able to evolve as a society. For such groundbreaking discoveries, researchers have the potential to be awarded with the Nobel Prize, one of the most prestigious awards given to specific individuals who display great determination and who have contributed to novel discoveries. I am very excited to be sharing with you the Nobel Prize winners for the year 2020, specifically in the field of Medicine and Physiology.
In 2020, the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology was awarded to three scientists who contributed to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis which is a pressing health problem across the world due to the major influence it has on the development of subsequent diseases and cancers. The three scientists who won the prize were Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles M. Rice who are all accomplished and experienced scientists who dedicated their time and work to researching the topic of hepatitis viruses. Before I tell you about the amazing work that they did and the amazing findings they uncovered throughout many of their studies, I want to give you a brief overview of who these scientists were and some of their accomplishments throughout their careers… aside from the fact that they have won the Nobel Prize of course.
First up is Harvey J. Alter who was born and raised in New York. After receiving his medical degree at the University of Rochester Medical School, he trained in internal medicine at Strong Memorial Hospital as well as at the University Hospitals of Seattle. He spent most of his adult life working towards becoming a physician, however in 1961 he worked as a clinical associate at the National Institutes of Health. After his time at the NIH he spent some of his time working with Georgetown University before eventually returning back to the NIH in 1969 where he became Chief of Clinical Studies and the Associate Director of Research in the Department of Transfusion Medicine. Aside from winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 2020, he was also awarded the prestigious Clinical Lasker Award in 2000, and in 2002 he was also elected as the first Clinical Center Scientist to both the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.
This brief overview only touches upon some of the major accomplishments that Dr. Alter has achieved in some of his career pathways. Although there are many more to touch upon, he is also one of the very few scientists who have received such awards and have been elected to such prestigious scientific societies. If it is not evident yet, Dr. Alter is a very accomplished mentor and an important contributor to the development of science and overall he is a very inspiring person.
Next up on the roster is Michael Houghton who although now lives in Canada, I must give credit to the fact that he truly is a Brit at heart. Houghton was born and raised in the United Kingdom and completed his entire educational career in the UK before travelling the world and becoming a part of research institutions across many cities. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1977 from King’s College London and upon receiving his doctorate degree in biochemistry, he went on to work at G.D. Searle and Company for a short period of time where he worked in the field of pharmaceutical manufacturing. After spending most of his adult life in the United Kingdom, he relocated to Emeryville, California in 1982 and worked at Chiron Corporation, a biotechnology firm. Houghton worked closely with other researchers and investigated non-A and non-B hepatitis using complementary DNA developed from blood plasma containing both strains of the virus. One of the major findings during his time at Chiron was the identification of DNA clones derived from the HCV RNA genome.
His final destination in which he currently resides is Alberta Canada, where he has become a part of the University of Alberta. Here, he is a Canadian Excellence Research Chair in Virology and is a professor of Virology at the University. Throughout his career, Houghton has had the opportunity to work alongside many accomplished professors and was consistently successful in discovering new and important scientific concepts within the field of virology.
Last, but certainly not least, is Charles M. Rice who is an American from Sacramento California. Rice received his Ph.D. degree in 1981 from the California Institute of Technology where he also trained as a postdoctoral fellow until the year 1985. After obtaining his degree and completing his fellowship, Rice established a research team with whom he would work to study different areas of biochemistry. During his time studying at the California Institute of Technology, he had the opportunity to work alongside renowned biologist James Strauss who you may know as the scientist responsible for identifying how RNA viruses assemble and replicate.
His main focus of study while obtaining his Ph.D. was biochemistry and he spent a lot of time in the laboratory, specifically analyzing RNA viruses. In addition to the fascinating research he conducted throughout his career, his background in biochemistry led him to work as a professor at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis in 1995, and then at the Rockefeller University in New York in 2001. For seventeen years, beginning in 2001, he was awarded the title of Scientific and Executive Director at the Rockefeller University where he continues his research of Hepatitis C today. Rice was privileged to work alongside some amazing scientists throughout his career and his extensive development of knowledge has led him to become an extremely successful scientist as a result.
Now, I’m sure by this point you are filled with great suspense as to exactly why these three accomplished and brilliant scientists won such a prestigious award. As mentioned previously, Alter, Houghton, and Rice collaborated to uncover the many mysteries of the Hepatitis viruses, however, the discovery that led them to the big win was the identification of Hepatitis C.
To give a little bit of background information behind what the virus is, the Hepatitis virus is specifically inflammation of the liver and is mainly brought on by viral infections, however, there can be other contributing factors to a regressing liver in a person’s body. It was during the 1940s that this virus was first discovered and scientists classified the virus into two different strains; Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B. Hepatitis A was believed to be transmitted by polluted water or food, and it was the least likely to cause death in the patient as the severity of long term effects are very weak. The second type of virus is Hepatitis B which is transmitted through the blood and bodily fluids and poses a greater health risk as it can lead to chronic conditions like cirrhosis and liver cancer. This disease has a very large impact on many people across the world and causes more than a million deaths worldwide making it associated with significant mortality rates.
The global spread and impact that this virus has on the entire population contribute to the significance behind Altar, Houghton, and Rice’s work. Their work began specifically with Harvey J. Alter who worked at the US National Institutes of Health and was conducting ongoing research on the occurrence of hepatitis in patients who received blood transfusions. Alter and his colleagues found that the discovery of Hepatitis B reduced the number of cases in patients, however, there was still a large sample of people who were experiencing this virus directly from transfusions. To rule out the cause as Hepatitis A and B, they conducted tests on the patient’s blood and they were successfully able to conclude that it was not Hepatitis A or B that was causing the viral infection, but rather an unknown infectious agent.
But what was this unknown agent, you may ask? Alter and his colleagues continued research and experiments to identify the characteristics of the novel virus and each of them approached the virus with different techniques. Michael Houghton, who worked at Chiron Corporation at the time, conducted studies that involved isolating the genetic sequence of the virus to create a collection of DNA fragments from blood samples infected with the virus. They found that the majority of DNA fragments came from the host genome however some were new and derived specifically from the virus. Since the body will produce antibodies when presented with a foreign viral infection, Houghton and his colleagues tested for cloned viral DNA fragments which encoded for viral proteins, and successfully, one positive clone was found! This movement during their study was the most important along their timeline in learning more about the unknown virus as they were able to identify that the clone belonged to the Flavivirus family and therefore they named it Hepatitis C.
If you did not understand some of the big words I used there since I’m guessing most of you who are reading this are not Ph.D. virologists, don’t worry, because the main takeaway from their research was that the presence of antibodies in Hepatitis patients implied that the virus was a missing agent. In addition to Michael Houghton’s work on the topic, Harvey J. Alter also conducted extensive research leading him to this fascinating discovery which involved identifying that the unknown virus was a common cause of the chronic forms of Hepatitis. Most of his work and contributions to the fact came from his time working at the National Institutes of Health in which I previously mentioned above.
The last important part of this discovery was done by Charles M. Rice who wondered if the virus could alone cause Hepatitis. Rice and other scientists investigated if the cloned virus was able to replicate and induce this disease in patients in which they noticed a region along the Hepatitis C genome that was important for viral replication. With the advancements of genetic engineering, Rice and his colleagues were able to generate an RNA variant of the virus which included the region responsible for viral replication and when they injected the variant into the liver of chimpanzees, the virus was then detected in blood samples from the chimpanzee and the effects of the virus were physically seen on the chimpanzee. This final source of evidence showed that the virus not only existed and contributed to the development of Hepatitis in humans, but that it can act alone and is the cause of transfusion-mediated Hepatitis cases.
If you have made it this far through the blog, then don’t hesitate to stop because of the fascinating work of Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles M. Rice was without a doubt brilliant and groundbreaking, what is equally important to this discovery was the significance of their discovery to the entire human population. As I have alluded to before, the Hepatitis virus is a significant contribution to the high mortality rate across many countries and this discovery is another milestone in the ongoing battle against this disease. Their groundbreaking discovery has made sensitive blood tests for the virus readily available for use by trained professionals in detecting if a patient has this disease or not. It has also eliminated post-transfusion Hepatitis in many parts of the world where access to resources to treat the infection is available which has contributed to the increased quality of health globally. Finally, the discovery has allowed for the development of antiviral drugs designed to target and destroy the virus itself in hopes of curing those who suffer from the disease and eventually killing the virus making it nonexistent to the population one day.
It takes a significant discovery like Hepatitis C and the great significance of this virus among the human population to win and be awarded such a prestigious award like the Nobel Prize and it is without a doubt that these three scientists were well deserving of this award for their groundbreaking discoveries. All in all, I hope that you found this discovery as interesting and brilliant as I did and I think that the unknown and mysterious part of medicine and science is such an intriguing aspect of it influencing me to hopefully pursue medicine as a career one day. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for the last blog of the Nobel Prize series next week where we will discuss the innovative work in the field of chemistry, worthy of winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
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About the author: Wynter Sutchy is a first-year undergraduate student at McMaster University studying Life Sciences and is from King City, ON. She is very passionate about the healthcare field and enjoys sharing her volunteering experiences through writing. She plans to pursue a career in medicine in the future and plans to explore the field of healthcare through research and volunteering throughout her undergraduate career. In her free time, you can expect her to be watching her favourite show, Greys Anatomy, teaching children how to swim, or baking some delicious desserts!
