Awards & Winners

Michael Houghton

Professor Michael Houghton is a British scientist, who along with Qui-Lim Choo, George Kuo and Daniel W Bradley, co-discovered Hepatitis C in 1989. He is currently Professor of Medical Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Alberta. After graduating with a degree in Biological Sciences from the University of East Anglia in 1972 and a PhD in Biochemistry from King's College London in 1977, Houghton joined G. D. Searle & Company before moving to Chiron Corporation in 1982. It was at Chiron that Houghton together with colleagues Qui-Lim Choo and George Kuo, and D.W. Bradley from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first discovered Hepatitis C. He was awarded the Robert Koch Prize in 1993, and the Lasker Award in 2000. In 2013 he become the first person to decline the $100,000 Gairdner Foundation International Award stating "I felt that it would be unfair of me to accept this award without the inclusion of two colleagues, Dr. Qui-Lim Choo and Dr. George Kuo".

Awards by Michael Houghton

Check all the awards nominated and won by Michael Houghton.

2000


Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award
(For pioneering work leading to the discovery of the virus that causes hepatitis C and the development of screening methods that reduced the risk of blood transfusion-associated hepatitis in the U.S. from 30 percent in 1970 to virtually zero in 2000.)