US, Japanese scientists win 2018 Nobel Medicine prize for cancer therapy

Two immunologists, James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan, have won the 2018 Nobel Medicine Prize for research into how the body's natural defenses can fight cancer.

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 defenses killing cancer cells.

"The seminal discoveries by the two Laureates constitute a landmark in our fight against cancer," the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said as it awarded the prize of nine million Swedish crowns ($1 million).

Allison and Honjo "showed how different strategies for inhibiting the brakes on the immune system can be used in the treatment of cancer," it said, adding that resulting treatments, known as immune checkpoint blockade, have "fundamentally changed the outcome" for some advanced cancer patients.

In 1995, Allison was one of two scientists to identify the CTLA-4 molecule as an inhibitory receptor on T-cells.

T-cells are a type of white blood cell that play a central role in the body's natural immunity to disease.

Allison, 70, "realized the potential of releasing the brake and thereby unleashing our immune cells to attack tumors," the Nobel jury said.

Around the same time, Honjo discovered a protein on immune cells, the ligand PD-1, and eventually realized that it also worked a brake, but acted in a different way.

On the website of his University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Allison said he was "honored 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," he added.

Honjo, 76, meanwhile, vowed to push ahead with his work. "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.

The Nobel jury said that "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."

Commenting on Monday's award, Dan Davis, an immunologist at Britain's University of Manchester, said "this game-changing cancer therapy" has "sparked a revolution in thinking about the many other ways in which the immune system can be harnessed or unleashed to fight cancer and other illnesses."

Charles Swanton, chief clinician at the charity Cancer Research UK, said the scientists' work had revolutionized cancer and immunotherapy.

"The booming field of immunotherapy that these discoveries have precipitated is still relatively in its infancy, so it's exciting to consider how this research will progress in the future and what new opportunities will arise," he said.

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 treatment of melanoma. It is known commercially as Yervoy.

His research also led to the first-ever immune checkpoint inhibitor drug.

Allison and Honjo have previously shared the 2014 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 leukemia in 1990.

"However, advanced cancer remains immensely difficult to treat, and novel therapeutic strategies are desperately needed," the Nobel Assembly said.

US drug makers Merck & Co and Bristol-Myers Squibb currently lead the field after winning drug approvals in 2014, but Roche, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Sanofi are also fielding rivals.

Sales of such medicines, which are given as infusions, are expected to reach some $15 billion this year, according to Thomson Reuters' consensus forecasts.

Some analysts see eventual revenues of $50 billion.

Medicine is the first of the Nobel Prizes awarded each year. The prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were created in accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901.

The literature prize will not be handed out this year after the awarding body was hit by a sexual misconduct scandal.

A Swedish court on Monday found a man at the center of the scandal guilty of rape and sentenced him to two years in jail.

The scandal has led to a bitter internal dispute that has prevented the Academy from functioning properly, and as a result it postponed this year's Literature Prize until 2019 -- the first time the prize has been delayed since 1949.

The winners of this year's physics prize will be announced on Tuesday, followed by the chemistry prize on Wednesday. The peace prize will be announced on Friday, and the economics prize will wrap up the Nobel season on Monday, October 8.

(Source: Agencies)

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