American Allison, Japanese Honjo win 2018 Nobel Medicine Prize

Immunologists, James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan, have won the 2018 Nobel Medicine Prize for their research into how the body’s natural defences can fight cancer.

This was announced on Monday by the Prize’s jury in Stockholm.

Aliison and Honjo’s researches figured out how to help the patient’s own immune system tackle cancer more quickly unlike more traditional forms of cancer treatment that directly target cancer cells and often with severe side-effects.

According to reports, Allison was one of the two scientists in 1995 to identify the CTLA-4 molecule as an inhibitory receptor on T-cells, a type of white blood cell that play 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.

Also around the same time, Honjo discovered a protein on immune cells, the ligand PD-1, and eventually realised that it also worked as a brake but in a different way.

Reacting to the news, Allison said on the website of his University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: “I am honoured and humbled to receive this prestigious recognition”.

“I never dreamed my research would take the direction it has,” he said.

“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, of following our urge to learn and to understand how things work.”

Honjo, 76, on his part, vowed to push ahead with his work.

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“I want to continue my research… so that this immune therapy will save more cancer patients than ever,” he told reporters at the University of Kyoto where he is based.

According to the Nobel jury, “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.”

Allison and Honjo previously shared the 2014 Tang Prize, seen as Asia’s version of the Nobels, for their research.

 

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