The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine | |
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Date | 5 October 2020 |
Location | Stockholm |
Country | Sweden |
Presented by | Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet |
Hosted by | Thomas Perlmann |
Reward(s) | 9 million SEK (2017)[1] |
First awarded | 1901 |
2020 laureates | Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles M. Rice |
Website | 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine |
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to the American virologists Harvey J. Alter (b. 1935), Michael Houghton (b. 1949) and Charles M. Rice (b. 1952) "for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus."[2][3][4] During the award ceremony on December 10, 2020, Prof. Gunilla Karlsson-Hedestam said:
"The discovery of the Hepatitis C virus by this year’s Laureates laid the foundation for our current understanding about how the virus survives in its niche during the long chronic phase of the infection, and how liver disease develops. And importantly, it led to the development of highly effective anti-viral medicines that now cure the infection in almost all treated persons."[5]