Scientists who made cancer breakthrough win Nobel prize
● Their work paved the way for immunotherapy treatment
An American and a Japanese scientist have jointly been awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for their “landmark” breakthrough in the fight against cancer.
James Allison of the University of Texas and Tasuku Honjo of Japan’s Kyoto University did parallel work to stimulate the body’s immune system’s ability to attack tumours.
The two winners made discoveries that “constitute a landmark in our fight against cancer”, according to a statement from the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute that awarded the prize.
Dr Allison studied a proafter tein that acts as a brake on the immune system and the potential of releasing that brake.
Mr Honjo separately discovered a new protein on immune cells and eventually found that it also acts as a brake.
“Therapies based on his discovery proved to be strikingly effective in the fight against cancer,” the assembly said in a statement.
Releasing the potential of immune cells to attack cancers joins other treatments including surgery, radiation and drugs. One famous recipient of the new treatment is former US president Jimmy Carter. Mr Carter was diagnosed in 2015 with the skin cancer melanoma, which had spread to his brain.
He was treated with a drug inspired by the research of Mr Honjo, and announced in 2016 that he no longer needed treatment.
Immunologist Mr Honjo said he began his research
a medical school classmate died from stomach cancer less than two years after it was discovered.
The 76-year-old, speaking yesterday at Kyoto University in Japan after the Nobel was announced in Stockholm, said his biggest reward now is to hear from cancer patients who have regained their health after being treated.
Mr Honjo, an avid golf player, said a member of a golf club once walked up to him suddenly, thanking him for the discovery that treated his lung cancer. He said: “He told me, ‘Thanks to you I can play golf again.’ ... That was a blissful moment. A comment like that makes me happier than any prize.”
Dr Allison, who said he was “honoured and humbled” to receive the award, said he didn’t set out to study cancer, but to better “understand the biology of T cells, these incredible cells that travel our bodies and work to protect us.”
That research has led to a treatment known as “immune checkpoint blockade,” and Dr Allison said he’s been able to meet cancer survivors who are living proof of its power.
One US cancer doctor said the discoveries by Dr Allison and Mr Honjo “absolutely paved the way for a new approach to cancer treatment.”
Dr Jedd Wolchok, chief of the melanoma and immunotherapeutics service at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, said that “an untold number of lives have been saved by the science that they pioneered.”
He said the idea of blocking the brakes on immune system cells had led to drugs for the skin cancer melanoma.