Cancer treatment lands two immunologists Nobel prize
Tasuku Honjo, the Japanese scientist who yesterday won the Nobel prize for medicine vowed to continue his work into cancer treatment to help as many sufferers as possible.
Two immunologists, James Allison of the US and Honjo, won this year’s prize for research into how the body’s natural defences can fight cancer, the jury said.
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 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, Sweden, that the therapy “has now revolutionised cancer treatment and has fundamentally changed the way we view how cancer can be managed.”
“I want to continue my research so this immune therapy will save more cancer patients than ever,” Honjo said. He said he would feel “immense joy” when people would say they had recovered from severe illnesses due to his work.
In 1995, Allison was one of two scientists to identify the ligand CTLA-4 as an inhibitory receptor on T-cells. He said he was “honoured and humbled to receive this prestigious recognition”.
Antibodies against PD-1 have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as an investigational new drug and developed for the treatment of cancer. Research by Allison’s team has meanwhile led to the development of a monoclonal antibody drug, which was approved by the FDA in 2011 for the treat- ment of melanoma.
“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,” the Nobel jury said.
Allison, a professor at the University of Texas in the US, and Honjo, a professor at Kyoto University, were in 2014 awarded the Tang Prize, touted as Asia’s version of the Nobels, for their research.
Other cancer treatments have previously been awarded Nobel prizes, including methods for hormone treatment for prostate cancer in 1966, chemotherapy in 1988, and bone marrow transplantation for leukaemia in 1990. – AFP