Caltech Alumnus Wins Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Hepatitis C Virus

A Caltech alumnus and two colleagues have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the Hepatitis C virus, helping save millions of lives around the world, the Nobel Foundation announced Monday.

Caltech alumnus and Professor of Virology at Rockefeller University Charles M. Rice, National Institutes of Health Senior Investigator Harvey J. Alter, and University of Alberta Professor of Virology Michael Houghton shared the prestigious prize.

“[They] made seminal discoveries that led to the identification of a novel virus, Hepatitis C virus,” the Nobel Foundation said in a written statement. “Prior to their work, the discovery of the Hepatitis A and B viruses had been critical steps forward, but the majority of blood-borne hepatitis cases remained unexplained.”

“The discovery of the Hepatitis C virus revealed the cause of the remaining cases of chronic hepatitis and made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives,” the statement said.

After earning his Ph.D. from Caltech in 1981, Rice continued working at the institution as a postdoctoral fellow through 1985, according to the Nobel Foundation.

After helping discover the Hepatitis C virus, Rice continued working with the aggressive liver disease, which infects 170 million people worldwide and claims about 400,000 lives each year, Caltech officials said in a written statement.

“Rice’s treatment, developed along with Ralf Bartenschlager of Heidelberg University and Michael J. Sofia of Arbutus Biopharma, has a 99 percent cure rate and no significant side effects,” according to the Caltech statement. “For this invention, the three received the prestigious Lasker Award in Clinical Medicine in 2016.”

Rice was also named a Distinguished Alumnus by the Caltech Alumni Association in 2019.

He initially set out to find out how HCV replicated, the Nobel Foundation said.

“In 1989, his Nobel Prize co-recipients, Alter and Houghton, were the first to create a full-length clone of HCV’s genome. But for years afterward, efforts to propagate HCV in liver cells in the laboratory failed,” according to the Nobel Foundation statement. “Rice demonstrated that this was because the end of the viral genome was missing in this laboratory clone of HCV. This part of the genome is required for the initiation of viral replication. His lab was the first to produce a version of the virus that could be cultured and studied in the laboratory.”

Rice worked in the laboratory of James Strauss, now Caltech’s Ethel Wilson Bowles and Robert Bowles Professor of Biology, Emeritus. 

“We have always referred to Charlie Rice as our best graduate student,” Strauss said. “This was strengthened when he got the Lasker Prize in 2016 and confirmed today with the Nobel.”

“He is also one of the nicest human beings you could want to meet and even spent one summer turning a bevy of SURF [Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship] students into a potent sequencing team determining the genome sequence of yellow fever virus,” Strauss said.

Rice is in good company, as 39 Caltech alumni have won a total of 40 Nobel Prizes, according to Caltech.