A British Nobel-winning virologist has launched a programme to develop the world’s first hepatitis C vaccine after joining a university in Hong Kong, tapping the city’s research funding, access to Chinese strains of the virus and partnerships with mainland drug-makers. Sir Michael Houghton, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the co-discovery of the hepatitis C virus, said he joined Baptist University after more than four decades in North America, as the United States and Europe had cut their science spending.“President Trump and his ministers have really damaged the National Institutes of Health, and my research grant was cut. In Europe, economic problems because of inflation also mean less money goes to research,” Houghton, who also leads the University of Alberta’s Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute in Canada, said.