Hepatitis C: milestones from discovery to clinical cure

On October 5th, 2020, Drs. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice were rewarded with Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for “the discovery of hepatitis C virus (HCV)”. During the past 50 years, remarkable achievements have been made in treatment of HCV infection: it has changed from being a life-threatening chronic disease to being curable. In this commentary, we briefly summarized the milestone events in the “scientific journey” from the first report of non-A, non-B hepatitis and discovery of the pathogen (HCV) to final identification of efficacious direct-acting antivirals. Further, we address the challenges and unmet issues in this field.