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The Nobel Prize, though often questionable in his selections, captivates the world every year. Although there are now scientific awards with higher monetary prices, there is no price as universally and immediately recognized as a sign of prestige.
The 2018 season began Monday with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which this year rewards two researchers for their work on cancer treatment. James P. Allison, 70, born in Alice, Texas, and now affiliated with the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas and the San Francisco Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, shares the award with Tasuku Honjo, 76 years old, professor at Kyoto University. in Japan. Their common price includes 9,000,000 Swedish kronor, or just over 1,000,000 USD.
In the 1990s, Allison and Honjo conducted separate but parallel research on the use of the human immune system to fight cancer. Because cancer is a disease caused by the mutation of cells specific to our body, our immune system rarely offers much help. Allison and Honjo have shown how two different proteins can, in slightly different ways, curb attempts by an immune system to attack growing cancer cells. If someone brakes these brakes, their work suggests that the immune system might have a chance to fight cancer. The work done by them and by others at the time led to the development of immunotherapy as a cancer treatment, which is now in full swing. This was the first step towards more precise and less brutal cancer treatments than surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
Drugs based on these proteins and similar proteins now help treat several types of cancer and are known as immune checkpoint inhibitors.
"I am so delighted that a Nobel Prize has been awarded for this revolutionary cancer treatment," said Dan Davis of the University of Manchester. The Guardian. "It does not work for everyone but lives have been saved and this has sparked a revolution in thinking about the many other ways the immune system can be exploited or released to fight cancer and other diseases. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg: many other drugs like this are on the horizon. "
By showing that the immune system can be modified to avoid cancer cells, Allison and Honjo have also helped to inspire the latest generation of gene-modified cancer treatments. Our Best of What's New Awards 2017 have rewarded Kymriah, the first FDA-approved treatment to use gene-modified white blood cells to fight the disease. Its results are staggering, but Kymriah is still not a quick fix for all patients, nor even for all types of cancers. Researchers are working towards Kymriah certifications from Novartis and Yescarta from Kite Pharma (two brands of the same therapy, known as CAR-T immunotherapy), for more varieties of the disease, but PopSci reported in December, treatments have a long way to go. When they work, they often work miraculously. When they do not, they can cause life-threatening side effects. And even patients who seem to be doing well do not always get the template of life that they hope for.
But despite all the typical hurdles of a new form of medicine, immunotherapy is without a doubt our best way to make cancer, at least as we know it, a thing of the past.
And for what it's worth, Allison could be one of the best harmonicists in Nobel history:
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