Cancer immunotherapy researchers win Nobel Prize

New York: The 2018 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded Monday to James P. Allison of the United States and Tasuku Honjo of Japan for their work on unleashing the immune system’s ability to attack cancer, a breakthrough in developing new cancer treatments.

“The seminal discoveries by the two Laureates constitute a landmark in our fight against cancer,” the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said as it awarded the prize of nine million Swedish crowns (Dh3.67 million; $1 million).

“Allison and Honjo showed how different strategies for inhibiting the brakes on the immune system can be used in the treatment of cancer,” it said.

The treatments, often referred to as “immune checkpoint therapy”, have “fundamentally changed the outcome for certain groups of patients with advanced cancer”, it added.

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

The prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were created in accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901.

The literature prize will not be handed out this year after the awarding body was hit by a sexual misconduct scandal. Allison and Honjo’s work had both worked on proteins that act as brakes on the immune system — preventing the body and its main immune cells, known as T-cells, from attacking tumour cells effectively.

The research honoured with today’s Nobel Prize paid off for at least one very famous patient: former US president Jimmy Carter. He was diagnosed in 2015 with the skin cancer melanoma, which had spread to his brain. He was treated with a drug inspired by the research of new Nobel laureate Tasuku Honjo, and announced in 2016 that he no longer needed treatment.

Honjo, 76, is a longtime professor at Kyoto University, where he did his breakthrough work. Previously, he did research at Osaka University, the University of Tokyo and the National Institutes of Health in Washington.

Allison, 70, is chairman of immunology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Centre. He did the work recognised by the Nobel committee while working at the University of California, Berkeley and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.

Allison and Honjo, working separately, showed in the 1990s how certain proteins act as “brakes” on the immune system’s T-cells, limiting their ability to attack cancer cells, and that suppressing those proteins could transform the body’s ability to fight cancer.

Until their breakthroughs, cancer treatment consisted of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Their work led to a fourth class of treatment, harnessing the immune system, what the Nobel committee at the Karolinska Institute called “an entirely new principle for cancer therapy.”

Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young were recognised for discoveries about the molecular mechanisms controlling the body’s circadian rhythm. Understanding misalignments between a person’s lifestyle and the rhythm dictated by their inner timekeeper has implications for health and disease risks.

— New York Times News Service, Reuters