A University of East Anglia graduate has been awarded a Nobel Prize along with two other scientists.

Michael Houghton, a former student at the UEA, and American scientists Harvey J Alter and Charles M Rice won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus.

Announcing the prize in Stockholm yesterday, the Nobel Committee noted that the trio’s work helped explain a major source of blood-borne hepatitis that could not be explained by the hepatitis A and B viruses.

Their work makes possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives, the committee said.

The World Health Organisation estimates there are over 70 million cases of hepatitis worldwide and 400,000 deaths each year.

Dr Houghton was born in Britain in 1950 and graduated from UEA with a degree in biological sciences in 1972.

He later studied at the Chiron Corporation in California before moving to the University of Alberta in Canada.