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Scientists behind game-changing cancer immunotherapies win Nobel medicine prize
STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) - American James Allison and Japanese Tasuku Honjo won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine on Monday for game-changing discoveries about how to harness and manipulate the immune system to fight cancer.The scientists’ work in the 1990s has since swiftly led to new and dramatically improved therapies for cancers such as melanoma and lung cancer, which had previously been extremely difficult to treat. "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 ($1 million). Allison and Honjo showed releasing the brakes on the immune system can unleash its power to attack cancer. The resulting treatments, known as immune checkpoint blockade, have "fundamentally changed the outcome" for some advanced cancer patients," the Nobel institute said. Posted by: Besoeker 2018-10-02 |
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