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Fighting cancer can be a thankless job, but several scientists who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of cancer treatments are getting the recognition they deserve this week after receiving the Nobel Prize.
James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in cancer immunotherapy.
While Sir Gregory P. Winter received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work, which has particular applications in the anti-cancer strategies developed by Allison and Honjo.
Frances H. Arnold and George P. Smith also shared the award for chemistry, but their award was for their work on development exploitation.
Use the power of the body's immune system
Allison and Honjo have discovered how to use the body's immune system to kill cancer cells more effectively.
Immunotherapy has become the fourth pillar of the cancer treatment plan, along with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
The discovery was to discover that our immune system has a brake pedal that prevents it from attacking our cells.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2018 was awarded jointly to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo "for their discovery of a cancer treatment by inhibiting negative immune regulation". (Niklas Elmehed / Nobel Media)
"In the immune system, there are inhibitory circuits that stop the immune system at a given moment, so that it does not hurt normal tissues, [but] it also prevents it from attacking tumor cells as effectively as T cells, "said Allison, director of the immunology department at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas. So we found a way to temporarily suspend the brakes and let them act. of."
In practice, Allison's method was essentially able to cure a patient with stage 4 skin cancer, who had had several months to live before this experimental treatment and who was still alive 19 years later. This seems to work best for skin cancer or melanomas, caring for up to 60% of patients.
Honjo shared this award for his work in characterizing a brake pedal that works at a different point of the cancer cell attack strategy, called PD-1. His team has also developed inhibitors that could block the brake pedal and speed up the cancer treatment.
The work of PD-1 is very effective in treating and even curing some lung cancers, lymphomas, kidney cancers and skin cancers.
Develop antibodies as lapping devices
One of the three Nobel Prize-winning scientists in chemistry, Winter's work is linked to breakthroughs by Allison and Honjo in immunotherapy.
The small proteins called antibodies are essential because they stick and target the abnormalities of the body to be destroyed by our immune system.
Winter has discovered a way to make antibodies safer for patients and to make them more targeted. In other words, it can make the tools used for cancer immunotherapy and many other therapeutic strategies much more effective than ever before.
The 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was split, one half awarded to Frances H. Arnold "for the Directed Evolution of Enzymes", the other half jointly with George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter "for phage display of peptides and antibodies. " (Niklas Elmehed / Nobel Media)
The Nobel laureates used them as small targeting devices to target cancer cells instead of healthy cells in the body.
Despite the achievements, Winter and Allison both said they are just core scientists who were lucky because their work has been useful for the medical field.
It's this work that has made the development of targeted cancer therapies more effective, even if it's not what they've decided to do.
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