Stockholm, October 1
Two immunologists, James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan, won the 2018 Nobel Medicine Prize for research into how the body’s natural defences can fight cancer, the jury said on Monday.
Unlike more traditional forms of cancer treatment that directly target cancer cells, Allison and Honjo figured out how to help the patient’s own immune system tackle the cancer more quickly. The treatment that the researchers helped develop, often referred to as “immune checkpoint therapy”, has fundamentally changed the outcome for certain groups of patients with advanced cancer.
The award-winning discovery led to treatments targeting proteins made by some immune system cells that act as a “brake” on the body’s natural defences killing cancer cells.
The Nobel Assembly said after announcing the prize in Stockholm that the therapy “has now revolutionised cancer treatment and has fundamentally changed the way we view how cancer can be managed”.
In 1995, Allison was one of two scientists to identify the CTLA-4 molecule as an inhibitory receptor on T-cells. T-cells are a type of white blood cell that plays a central role in the body’s natural immunity to disease. Allison, 70, “realised the potential of releasing the brake and thereby unleashing our immune cells to attack tumours”, the Nobel jury said.
Around the same time, Honjo discovered a protein on immune cells, the ligand PD-1, and eventually realised that it also worked a brake, but acted in a different way.
On the website of his University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Allison said he was “honoured and humbled to receive this prestigious recognition”. “I never dreamed my research would take the direction it has,” he said.
The Nobel jury said that “for more than 100 years, scientists attempted to engage the immune system in the fight against cancer”. “Until the seminal discoveries by the two laureates, progress into clinical development was modest.”
Research by Allison’s team has meanwhile led to the development of a monoclonal antibody drug, which was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2011 for the treatment of melanoma. It is known commercially as Yervoy.
The duo will share the Nobel prize sum of nine million Swedish kronor. They will receive their prize from Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will. — AFP
‘Brake’ on cancer cells
American James P Allison and Japanese Tasuku Honjo found that the body’s own immune system could be turned on cancers, marking a major breakthrough in our fight against the disease
Allison and Honjo, working separately, showed in 1995 how certain proteins made by some immune system cells that act as a “brake” on the body’s natural defences killing cancer cells
Their work led to a fourth class cancer treatment, harnessing the immune system, what the Nobel jury called ‘an entirely new principle for cancer therapy’
Proof of basic science
It’s a great, emotional privilege to meet cancer patients who’ve been successfully treated with immune checkpoint blockade. They are living proof of the power of basic science. — James Allison of US
Work not yet done
I am honoured to get the Nobel, but my work was not yet done. I want to continue my research... so that this immune therapy will save more cancer patients than ever — Tasuku Honjo of Japan
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