New Nobel Laureate Talks Today's Virology

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Scientific American

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4.3 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2020

⏱️ 4 minutes

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Summary

Charles Rice, who today shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, talked about how rapidly research now occurs, compared with his early work.

Transcript

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0:00.0	May I have your attention please you can now book your train tickets on Uber and get
0:08.0	10% back in credits to spend on your next Uber ride so you don't have to walk home in the brain again.
0:15.0	Trains, now on Uber. T's and C's apply. Check the Uber app. This is scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky.
0:28.5	I guess we're we're sort of in the middle of a major biorology education.
0:34.6	Charles Rice of the Rockefeller University in New York City.
0:38.3	I think that, you know, the field has definitely changed, you know, since the days when I was a graduate student.
0:46.7	And I think one of the things that is very reassuring now is really the global response to this this pandemic in the sort of
0:58.6	academic and clinical and you know sort of pharma communities, the rate of progress.
1:05.0	Earlier today, October 5th, 2020, Rice was informed that he had won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of the virus that causes hepatitis C.
1:15.3	The identification of the virus has led to tests and treatments for the condition.
1:19.9	Rice shared the prize with Harvey Alter of the National Institutes of Health and Michael
1:24.2	Houghton of the University of Alberta.
1:26.6	It took us months and months of a toil to sequence a single viral genome.
1:32.2	Now people can do that in a matter of hours and the rate at
1:36.5	which people have been able to sort of make progress on understanding SARS-Cobe 2 and uh and COVID-19 is just spectacular.
1:46.0	Rice spoke this morning on a web press conference from Rockefeller University.
1:51.0	So I think it's taught us a lot of things about science in general if there's really a
1:56.7	a pressing problem we sort of you know mobilize people all around the world to sort of work on these problems,
2:04.4	really, you know, great progress can be made.
2:07.4	You know, people would love to have a cure in a week or
2:10.4	a vaccine in a week.
2:11.4	I mean, that's not feasible, but the speed with which good therapeutics and vaccines will be developed for SARS-Cove2 to prevent COVID-19 is going to be spectacular. And it has a way of, I think, really sort of changing the way that science
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