Objective C

Michael Houghton found the missing piece of a decade-old puzzle, a molecular needle in a haystack, and saved millions of lives. When hepatitis A virus was discovered it explained some cases of hepatitis - the deadly liver inflammation that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer. Hepatitis B virus’ discovery followed, explaining more cases, but many more, particularly in recipients of blood transfusions, remained unaccounted-for. Deducing that these patients must harbour a third virus, Houghton and his team painstakingly sequenced fragments of DNA from an infected chimpanzee, and found one unwelcome strand amongst the chimpanzee genetic material. This snippet matched molecules from a human patient fighting off the sickness, confirming it was the missing cause: hepatitis C virus (pictured in infected liver cells). The discovery won a share of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, and allowed the development of new detection tools and treatments that have raised hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus altogether.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image of Prof. Michael Houghton by Kerry Angelo Piper on Flickr
• Image of Hepatitis C infected cells by Markus von Schaewen, Princeton University ©held by the photographer
• Image of Prof. Michael Houghton published with a Creative Commons 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) attribution