Harvey Alter, Charles Rice, and Michael Houghton.
The Lasker Foundation congratulates the recipients of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This year’s prize goes to three scientists who received Lasker Awards for groundbreaking hepatitis C research.
Harvey Alter and Michael Houghton were honored with the 2000 Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award for their pioneering work leading to the discovery of the virus that causes hepatitis C and for the development of screening methods that reduced the risk of blood transfusion-associated hepatitis in the U.S. from 30% in 1970 to virtually zero in 2000.
Charles Rice was recognized with a 2016 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for contributing to the creation of a system to study the replication of the virus that causes hepatitis C, which was subsequently used to develop a treatment of this chronic, often lethal disease.
