Scientists Win Nobel Prize for Cancer Discoveries
Two scientists have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discoveries that led to a new way to treat cancer.
Nobel officials announced that American James Allison and Japan’s Tasuku Honjo were winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. They will share a $1 million award that comes with the prize.
The two researchers discovered a way to help a person’s own immune system attack cancer in the body.
Both James Allison and Tasuku Honjo studied proteins that prevent the body and its main immune cells, known as T-cells, from attacking cancer cells. After years of study, the researchers discovered a way to use drugs that would allow the immune system to attack tumor cells.
Their discoveries led to greatly improved treatments for skin cancer, as well as cancers of the lungs, head, neck, kidneys and liver. These types of cancers can be very difficult to treat.
The new treatments represent “a landmark in our fight against cancer,” the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said when announcing the winners.
Tasuku Honjo, a professor at Japan’s Kyoto University, said winning the prize was “a great honor.” Honjo said he hopes to keep working on the research in an effort to save more cancer patients.
