UC Davis alumnus Charles Rice wins Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medication

Professor of virology identified for discovery of the hepatitis C virus

When Charles Rice, a professor of virology at The Rockefeller College, listened to his landline ringing at 4:30 a.m., he figured somebody from his laboratory was pulling a prank on him. But when the voice on the other stop of the line pointed out the names of his co-Laureates and hepatitis C, Rice’s preliminary discomfort turned into shock and disbelief. He experienced gained a Nobel Prize. 

“It’s not a little something you can readily go again to slumber immediately after listening to,” Rice stated.

Soon after decades of operate in the discipline, Rice has been honored with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Drugs for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. As explained in an write-up by The Rockefeller College, Rice was responsible for acquiring the lacking sequence on the hepatitis C genome and demonstrating that this virus was sufficient more than enough to induce hepatitis C in animals. He also created a way for the virus to replicate in cells devoid of manufacturing the condition alone, permitting researchers to acquire prescription drugs inhibiting replication utilizing his technique. 

James Letts, an assistant professor in the department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at UC Davis, spelled out that hepatitis C is a chronic infection, which leads to critical circumstances these as liver cancer or cirrhosis. 

“Especially these days with the pandemic, we really realize how devastating these viruses can be and it’s really uncommon to in fact be ready to heal a single,” Letts explained. “[Rice’s] perform actually paved the way to establish these types of therapies that can fundamentally crystal clear the virus from the program from a human being.” 

In advance of his involvement with virology, Rice studied zoology at UC Davis as an undergraduate pupil. Even now, he nevertheless has fond reminiscences of his time at Davis: functioning in the library, sitting down on the garden in the Quad when the weather was good and living with his shut pals on Rice Lane. According to Mark Winey, the dean of UC Davis’s Faculty of Biological Sciences, Rice had described in previous interviews that taking part in exploration in the course of his early educational job at Davis aided him to see himself as a scientist.

“That fingers-on knowledge and the opportunity to get the job done in a lab or do subject do the job is seriously crucial in supporting learners come across their path,” Winey said.

Rice’s interest in viruses was sparked when he was put in a virology lab through his graduate scientific studies at the California Institute of Engineering. According to Rice, he was on the lookout to be placed in a developmental biology lab utilizing sea urchins, as he served as an undergraduate researcher in a similar laboratory at UC Davis, but was put into this lab by possibility. 

“I could have ended up, if I’d gotten placed in a various lab, doing something totally different,” Rice stated. “It was form of a random event.”

As he continued his job in virology at Washington College, Rice executed genetic analyses on the yellow fever virus, which is part of the Flaviviridae spouse and children. When investigation in 1989 came out about the genome structure for non-A, non-B hepatitis—now identified as hepatitis C—his lab found that the genome sequences were very related to that of a flavivirus. Rice recalled that when he initial began functioning with the virus, hepatitis C research was unpopular thanks to the incapability to develop the virus in a culture in the laboratory. But by the conclude of the 1990’s, desire in the virus grew and most of his laboratory came to do the job in this industry. 

Due to the fact then, Rice has opened his have laboratory of virology and infectious disorder at The Rockefeller College studying the mechanisms of flaviviruses. Despite the fact that Letts only worked there for three months when he was a graduate college student, the two even now preserve in contact. Letts explained that Rice has constantly been supportive of him and his career at Davis, and even wrote him a advice letter for his existing position. Alison Ashbrook, a postdoctoral fellow now performing in Rice’s lab, also spoke of Rice’s encouraging spirit, stating he pushes folks to keep their personal convictions and to be unbiased. 

“One of Charlie’s ideal characteristics is how a lot he values students and educating the next technology of experts,” Ashbrook mentioned through electronic mail. “He sees limitless prospective in any one with the curiosity and willpower to remedy the scientific mysteries that lurk close to just about every corner. No matter if you’re in Charlie’s lab or yet another, if you are passionate about science, he will usually root for you!”

Ashbrook became mindful of Rice’s function right after speaking about a publication from his lab in the course of graduate university. It was through this paper that she fashioned her first feeling that Rice was an authentic and rigorous scientist. Influenced by the precision of the examine and the integrity of reporting an unanticipated final result, she went on to study additional of his papers and was surprised by the quality and breadth of his operate. 

“Charlie, to start with and foremost, is a scientist,” Ashbrook reported by using e mail. “He eats, sleeps, and breathes science. He is a person of the most curious scientists I know and is psyched by practically any scientific problem, which is evident by the genuinely varied assignments ongoing in the lab.” 

For undergraduate pupils who are presently pursuing a vocation in investigation, Rice recommended that you have to adore what you are accomplishing. He described it as ‘mind-boggling’ that scientists are fortunate to be able to take a look at the items they are interested in even though also pursuing it as a career. Similar to how he seasoned a lot of obstacles between the time in the mid-1970s when term of the virus commenced to distribute, to the 2010s when there is now a cure for hepatitis C, he encourages college students to take pleasure in the journey in spite of its ups and downs, alternatively than concentrating on the endpoint.

“I think you just have to adore it. You just have to,” Rice said. “If you uncover something you truly have the want to do and the passion for, you are heading to do the very best work. You’re likely to be pondering about it all the time. You are likely to be unstoppable when you experience hurdles, which is accurate in investigation.” 

Composed by: Michelle Wong — [email protected]