Two scientists win Nobel Prize for discovering new pillar in cancer therapy | Smart News

Two researchers whose work triggered a revolution in cancer treatment won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine this year. Tasuku Honjo currently at Kyoto University in Japan and James Allison now at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston has discovered separately how to use the body's immune system to fight cancer.

Allison and Honjo are now 70 years old. In the 1990s, their research on the basic biology of the human immune system resulted in the creation of a class of drugs called checkpoint inhibitors, reports Joe Neel for NPR. These drugs remove the restrictions of the immune system and allow immune cells to attack and destroy cancer cells. Not all cancers can be treated with checkpoint inhibitors, but for those who can, the results are striking.

Currently available control point inhibitors for patients can be used to treat lung, kidney, bladder, head and neck cancers as well as aggressive skin cancers and Hodgkin's lymphoma. reports Denise Grady for The New York Times. When treatments work, the cancer goes into remission. Allison tells The temperature that patients are "good to go for a decade or more."

"This is a totally new principle because unlike the previous strategies, it does not rely on cancer cells, but rather on the brakes – the control points – of the immune system. host, "said Klas Kärre, member of the Nobel Committee and Immunologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, according to one Nature article by Heidi Ledford and Holly Else. "The major discoveries of the two winners represent a paradigm shift and a milestone in the fight against cancer."

T cells, a kind of white blood cell that fights infections, carry proteins called checkpoints that the body uses to define or not the mode of attack of T cells. hang on these control points, allowing the malignant cells to go unnoticed.

In his laboratory based at the University of California, Berkeley at the time, Allison's work focused on a checkpoint protein called CTLA-4, a press release from the Nobel Committee Explain. Allison's team created a drug that could stick to CTLA-4 and prevent it from working. This essentially reduced the T cell brakes and allowed them to attack the cancer cells. In 2010, Allison tested this drug as part of a clinical trial in people with advanced melanoma. Skin cancer has disappeared in many cases.

Independently, Honjo had discovered PD-1, another protein in T cells. Working in his laboratory at Kyoto University, the Honjo team discovered how to block PD-1 and release T cells in a different way. Their drug has been spectacularly successful in patients treated in 2012, including giving long-term remission to people with metastatic cancer. Experts previously thought that metastasis, when cancer spread to other organs and tissues, was not treatable, says the Nobel Committee press release.

Ledford and Else heard the news of his Nobel Prize at a conference on immunology in New York. His colleagues arrived in his hotel room with champagne at 6:30 am to celebrate. Honjo has gathered his team in the lab to take advantage of the recognition.

"When recovering patients thank me, I really feel the importance of our research," Honjo said at a press conference at the Japanese university, reports Grady. The New York Times. "I would like to continue my cancer research for a while so that this immunotherapy will save more patients than ever before."

Currently, many drugs on the market are expensive and have side effects, reports Karen Weintraub for American scientist. Hundreds of clinical trials are currently underway to test CTLA-4, PD-1 and other drugs that use the immune system to fight various cancers.

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