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Medicine or physiology
How immunotherapy has become a revolutionary cancer treatment
The Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology this year was awarded to two researchers working in the field of cancer immunotherapy, which exploits the body's immune system to fight cancer. This type of treatment has helped many patients for whom traditional types of cancer treatment were inadequate. Immunotherapy medications do not work for everyone and have only been approved for certain types of cancer. But much research is underway to make immunotherapy an option for more patients.
James P. Allison's working with the protein called CTLA-4 has been a major step in the realization of immunotherapy. Protein slows down the immune system. Allison has found that removal of this fracture releases the immune system against cancer. You can learn more about his work in his ResearchGate profile.
While Allison examined CTLA-4, Tasuku Honjo obtained similar results with another protein: PD-1.
The work of the two laureates paved the way for a whole class of immunotherapy drugs, checkpoint inhibitors. This type of immunotherapy still dominates field research, representing more than a third of the best immunotherapy research specialists reading.
Physics
Researchers turn lasers into mini-tools
The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes three scientists who turned laser light into miniature tools.
Arthur Ashkin invented the laser tweezers, which use the light's radiation pressure to capture particles, atoms and even living cells. A major breakthrough for the technology came in 1987, when Ashkin used his tweezers to treat live bacteria without damaging them. This tool is still widely used, for example to study the internal functioning of cells.
The other winners of the prize, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland, have been recognized for finding the way to generate super short and super intense laser pulses. Their technique has become the norm for high intensity lasers, which have many real applications, including Lasik eye surgery. Some scientists believe that this type of laser could one day also be used for particle physics and cancer treatment.
Strickland was still a graduate student when she did the work that earned her a Nobel Prize. Find out what she's done since on ResearchGate.
Chemistry
Chemists exploit the power of evolution
The winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry applied the principles of evolution to the design of proteins. Enzymes and the resulting antibodies help protect the environment and treat diseases.
Frances H. Arnold designs enzymes, proteins that regulate chemical reactions. The creation of new enzymes by design is difficult. It is difficult to understand how a small modification to complex molecules could affect their functioning. That's why Arnold turned to evolution for help. She inserted the gene producing enzymes into fast-reproducing bacteria. Over the generations, she researched the mutations that work best and repeated the process, essentially selecting enzymes for the desired function. The technique is now widely used and Arnold's enzymes help to make fuels and other chemicals more environmentally friendly. Browse Arnold's research on ResearchGate to learn more about his work.
Arnold shares the price with George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter. Smith was the first to use another synthetic biology technique in which he used a bacteriophage, a virus that infects bacteria, to determine the genes responsible for certain proteins and to develop new ones. Winter has used the antibodies of engineering methods for new pharmaceuticals.
ResearchGate is the professional network of the scientific world. On the network, 15 million researchers and scientists connect with their peers and share and discover science as they go. The network provides advertising and scientific recruitment solutions to companies, research institutes and other scientific organizations.
Image selected with permission of Adam Baker.
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