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The Nobel Laureates in Medicine or Physiology are shown on a screen at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. (Fredrik Sandberg / TT via AP)
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded Monday to cancer researchers James P. Allison, 70, and Tasuku Honjo, 76, whose studies led to the development of drugs release the human immune system against the deadly disease.
American and Japanese researchers have discovered methods for removing the brakes from the cells that fight the invaders, thus paving the way for cancer immunotherapy, which has been associated with surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy as major weapon in the fight against cancer.
Allison conducted her research at the University of California at Berkeley and is now at the Dr. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Honju works at the Kyoto Japanese University.
Allison's work ultimately culminated in the 2011 approval of the Food and Drug Approval of ipilimumab, the first of a class of drugs called checkpoint inhibitors, that releases the immune system for tumor attack. malignant.
Checkpoint inhibitors allow the body's natural defenses to launch their full weight against cancer cells. They have shown remarkable success against cancers such as metastatic melanoma, bladder cancer and lung cancer, causing a revolution in treatment and a $ 1 billion market for drugs. Former President Jimmy Carter has been successfully treated against the disease through the use of one of the medications, as well as a surgery and a radiotherapy.
The approach has less success against other cancers, such as prostate and pancreatic cancers, and can lead to serious side effects for some people.
James P. Allison with his collaborator and wife Padmanee Sharma. Allison developed Yervoy, the first of the checkpoint inhibitors.
Allison grew up in a small town in South Texas where her father, a country doctor, made house calls. Her mother died of lymphoma at the age of 11, the first among her family members to die of the disease, the second leading cause of death in the United States. He is married to a physician, Padmanee Sharma, a research associate and specialist in kidney, bladder and prostate cancer to Dr. D. Anderson.
Allison has embarked on cancer research because he's always wanted to be the first person to understand something. At the beginning of his lectures at the University of Texas at Austin, he realized that the medical school was not for him.
"If you are a doctor, you must make the right choice; otherwise, you could hurt someone, "he says. As a researcher, "I like being on the edge and being wrong."
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