The Nobel prize is one of the most coveted forms of recognition for any scientist. In addition to the obvious recognition of the scientific community is still a very good cash reward. Besides, Nobel prize winners often do more than just put their name in the history of world science, but also provide a starting point for other studies, more moving, human achievements ahead. And just recently the official Twitter feed of the Nobel Committee named the prize winners in physiology and medicine. They were James Allison and Honjo Tasuku, and was awarded the prize for developing a new method of therapy of cancer.
Recall that a new way of dealing with cancer is to operationalize the mechanisms of our immune system. In the course of their research, the researchers studied the immune response on tumor development. James Ellison investigated a special protein that can inhibit the immune system and found that by neutralizing this protein can “boost” the immune system to fight cancer cells. At the same time, his colleague Honjo Tasuku found that the studied protein is available in all immune cells. So, this discovery may serve as a starting point in the creation of new approaches in treatment. As stated by the Secretary of the Nobel Committee for medicine Thomas Perlman,
“Dr. Honjo, judging by the conversation, was very happy. It was hard for me to understand, did you expect this news. However, I was under the impression that he was surprised and said that he is very glad that could share the prize with Dr. Ellison. By Dr. James Ellison I still could not be reached. Perhaps he already knows that he won the award.”
It is also worth noting that the “Nobel week” has just begun and we still have a lot of news on this subject. On October 2, will be announced winner of the Nobel prize in physics, October 3 — in chemistry, 5 October was awarded the peace prize, October 8 – winner of the Nobel prize in Economics.
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Winners of the Nobel prize in medicine
Vladimir Kuznetsov