Nobel Prize for Medicine goes to cancer treatment

Two scientists who discovered how to fight cancer using the body's immune system won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

The work of US professor James P Allison and Japanese professor Tasuku Honjo has resulted in the development of treatments for advanced and fatal skin cancer.

Immune therapy at checkpoints has revolutionized cancer treatment, the Swedish Academy announced.

Experts say that it has "revealed" striking efficiency ".

Professors Allison of the University of Texas and Honjo of Kyoto University will share the Nobel Prize of nine million Swedish crowns – about $ 1.01 million, or € 870,000.

In accepting the award, Tasuku Honjo told reporters, "I want to continue my research … so that this immune treatment saves more cancer patients than ever before."

Professor Allison said, "It is a great emotional privilege to meet cancer patients who have been successfully treated with immune blockade at checkpoints. They are living proof of the power of basic science, to follow our desire to learn and understand how things work. "

Treat the not found

Our immune system protects us from the disease, but it has built-in protections to prevent it from attacking our own tissues.

Some cancers can take advantage of these "brakes" and avoid the attack.

Allison and Honjo, both in their early 70s, have discovered a way to release our immune cells so that they attack tumors by deactivating the proteins that block them.

And this has led to the development of new drugs that now offer hope to patients with advanced cancer and then incurable.

The NHS uses the immune system to treat people with the most severe form of skin cancer, melanoma.

It does not work for everyone, but for some patients, it seems to have worked incredibly well, completely eliminating the tumor, even after it began to spread throughout the body.

Such remarkable results have never been seen before for patients like these.

Doctors have also used this treatment to help some people with advanced lung cancer.

Professor Charles Swanton, of Cancer Research UK, congratulated the winners and said, "Through this groundbreaking work, the innate power of our cancer immune system has been harnessed and exploited as part of treatments that continue to Save the lives of patients.As advanced melanoma, lung and kidney, these immune stimulating drugs have transformed the outlook for many patients with short options.

"The burgeoning field of immunotherapy that these discoveries have precipitated is still in its infancy, so it's exciting to see how this research will progress in the future and what new opportunities will come."

Medicine is the first of the Nobel Prizes awarded each year.

The literature award will not be awarded this year after the jury has been victim of a sexual misconduct scandal.

Previous winners

2017- Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young for explaining how bodies observe a circadian rhythm or a biological clock

2016 – Yoshinori Ohsumi for discovering how cells stay healthy by recycling their waste.

2015 – William C Campbell, Satoshi Amura and Youyou Tu for the discovery of anti-parasite drugs.

2014 – John O. Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser for discovering the brain's navigation system.

2013 – James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas Sudhof for their discovery of how the cells transport the material precisely.

2012 – Two pioneers in stem cell research – John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka – were awarded the Nobel Prize after turning adult cells into stem cells.

2011 – Bruce Beutler, Jules Hoffmann and Ralph Steinman share the prize after revolutionizing the understanding of how the body fights infection.

2010 – Robert Edwards for designing the FIV fertility treatment that led to the first "test tube baby" in July 1978.

2009 – Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for finding telomeres at the ends of chromosomes.