For which the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded. The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded for cancer immunotherapy The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to James Ellison and Tasuku Honjo for their developments in cancer therapy by activating the immune response. The announcement of the winner is broadcast live on the website of the Nobel Committee. More information about the merits of scientists can be found in the press release of the Nobel Committee.

Scientists have developed a fundamentally new approach to cancer therapy, different from previously existing radiotherapy and chemotherapy, which is known as "checkpoint inhibition" of immune cells (a little about this mechanism can be found in our immunotherapy). Their research is focused on how to eliminate the suppression of the activity of cells of the immune system by cancer cells. Japanese immunologist Tasuku Honjo from the University of Kyoto discovered the PD-1 (Programmed Cell Death Protein-1) receptor on the surface of lymphocytes, the activation of which leads to the suppression of their activity. His American colleague James Allison from the Anderson Cancer Center of the University of Texas showed for the first time that an antibody blocking the CTLA-4 inhibitory complex on the surface of T-lymphocytes, introduced into the body of animals with a tumor, leads to the activation of the antitumor response and tumor reduction.

The research of these two immunologists has led to the emergence of a new class of anti-cancer drugs based on antibodies that bind to proteins on the surface of lymphocytes or cancer cells. The first such drug, ipilimumab, an antibody that blocks CTLA-4, was approved in 2011 for the treatment of melanoma. An anti-PD-1 antibody, nivolumab, was approved in 2014 against melanoma, lung, kidney, and several other types of cancer.

“Cancer cells, on the one hand, are different from our own, on the other hand, they are. The cells of our immune system recognize this cancer cell, but do not kill it, - explained N+1 Professor of the Skolkovo Institute of Sciences and Technology and Rutgers University Konstantin Severinov. - The authors, among other things, discovered the PD-1 protein: if this protein is removed, then immune cells begin to recognize cancer cells and can kill them. This is the basis of cancer therapy, which is now widely used even in Russia. Such PD-1 inhibitory drugs have become an essential component of the modern arsenal of cancer control. He is very important, without him it would be much worse. These people really gave us a new way to control cancer - people live because there are such therapies."

Oncologist Mikhail Maschan, deputy director of the Dima Rogachev Center for Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Immunology, says immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment.

“In clinical oncology, this is one of the biggest events in history. We are just now beginning to reap the benefits that the development of this type of therapy has brought, but the fact that it has turned the situation in oncology became clear about a decade ago - when the first clinical results of the use of drugs created on the basis of these ideas appeared,” Maschan said. in conversation with N+1.

With a combination of checkpoint inhibitors, long-term survival, that is, actual recovery, can be achieved in 30-40 percent of patients with certain types of tumors, in particular melanoma and lung cancer, he says. He noted that new developments based on this approach will appear in the near future.

“This is the very beginning of the journey, but there are already many types of tumors - both lung cancer and melanoma, and a number of others, in which therapy has shown effectiveness, but even more - in which it is only being studied, its combinations with conventional types of therapy are being studied. This is the very beginning, and a very promising start. The number of people who have survived thanks to this therapy is already measured in tens of thousands,” Maschan said.

Every year, in the run-up to the announcement of the winners, analysts try to guess who will be awarded the prize. This year, Clarivate Analytics, which traditionally makes predictions based on the citation of scientific papers, included in the Nobel List Napoleone Ferrara, who discovered a key factor in the formation of blood vessels, Minoru Kanehis, who created the KEGG database, and Salomon Snyder, who worked on receptors. for key regulatory molecules in the nervous system. It is interesting that the agency indicated James Ellison as a possible Nobel Prize winner in 2016, that is, in his regard, the forecast came true pretty soon. Whom the agency reads as laureates in other Nobel disciplines - physics, chemistry and economics, you can find out from our blog. In literature, this year the award will be presented.

Daria Spasskaya

In early October, the Nobel Committee summed up the work for 2016 in various areas of human activity that brought the greatest benefit and named the Nobel Prize nominees.

You can be skeptical about this award as much as you like, doubt the objectivity of the choice of laureates, question the value of the theories and merits put forward for nomination ... . All this, of course, has a place to be ... Well, tell me, what is the value of the peace prize awarded, for example, to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 ... or the similar award to American President Barack Obama for peace on the planet, which made even more noise in 2009 🙂 ?

Nobel Prizes

And this year 2016 was not without criticism and discussions of the new awardees, for example, the world ambiguously accepted the award in the field of literature, which went to the American rock singer Bob Dylan for his poems to songs, and the singer himself reacted even more ambiguously to the award, reacting for the award after only two weeks ....

However, regardless of our philistine opinion, this high the award is considered the most prestigious award in the scientific world, has been living for more than a hundred years, has hundreds of awardees, a prize fund of millions of dollars.

The Nobel Foundation was founded in 1900 after the death of his testator Alfred Nobel- an outstanding Swedish scientist, academician, Ph.D., inventor of dynamite, humanist, peace activist and so on ...

Russia in the list of awardees 7th place, has in the entire history of awards 23 nobelists or 19 awards(there are groups). The last Russian to be awarded this high honor was Vitaly Ginzburg in 2010 for his discoveries in the field of physics.

So, the awards for 2016 are divided, the awards will be presented in Stockholm, the total size of the fund changes all the time and the size of the award changes accordingly.

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2016

Few ordinary people, far from science, delve into the essence of scientific theories and discoveries that deserve special recognition. And I'm one of those :-) . But today I want to dwell on one of the awards for this year in a little more detail. Why medicine and physiology? Yes, everything is simple, one of the most intense sections of my blog “Be healthy”, because the work of the Japanese interested me and I understood a little about its essence. I think the article will be of interest to people who adhere to a healthy lifestyle.

So, the Nobel Prize winner in the field of Physiology and Medicine for 2016 became 71 year old Japanese Yoshinori Osumi(Yoshinori Ohsumi) is a molecular biologist at Tokyo University of Technology. The topic of his work is “Discovery of the mechanisms of autophagy”.

autophagy in Greek, “self-eating” or “self-eating” is a mechanism for processing and utilizing unnecessary, obsolete parts of the cell, which is performed by the cell itself. Simply put, the cell eats itself. Autophagy is inherent in all living organisms, including humans.

The process itself has been known for a long time. The scientist’s research, conducted back in the 90s of the century, opened and allowed not only to understand in detail the importance of the autophagy process for many physiological processes occurring inside a living organism, in particular, when adapting to hunger, response to infection, but also to identify the genes that trigger this process.

How is the process of cleansing the body? And just like we clean up our garbage at home, only automatically: cells pack all unnecessary trash, toxins into special “containers” - autophagosomes, then move them to lysosomes. Here, unnecessary proteins and damaged intracellular elements are digested, while fuel is released, which is supplied to feed the cells and build new ones. It's that simple!

But what's most interesting about this study is that autophagy is triggered faster and more powerful when the body experiences it, and especially when it's FASTING.

The discovery of the Nobel Prize winner proves that religious fasting and even periodic, limited hunger are still useful for a living organism. Both of these processes stimulate autophagy, cleanse the body, relieve the burden on the digestive organs, and thereby save from premature aging.

Disruptions in autophagy processes lead to diseases such as Parkinson's, diabetes, and even cancer. Doctors are looking for ways to deal with them with medication. Or maybe you just need not be afraid to expose your body to health fasting, thereby stimulating the renewal processes in cells? At least occasionally...

The work of the scientist once again confirmed how amazingly subtle and clever our body is, how far not all the processes in it are known...

The well-deserved prize of eight million Swedish crowns (932 thousand US dollars) will be received by the Japanese scientist along with other awardees in Stockholm on December 10, the day of Alfred Nobel's death. And I think it's well deserved...

Were you even slightly interested? And how do you feel about such conclusions of the Japanese? Do they make you happy?

Tokyo Institute of Technology Professor Yoshinori Ohsumi. The Japanese scientist was awarded it for his fundamental work, which explained to the world how autophagy occurs - a key process for the processing and recycling of cellular components.

Thanks to the work of Yoshinori Ohsumi, other scientists have received the tools to study autophagy not only in yeast, but also in other living beings, including humans. Further research has shown that autophagy is a conserved process, and it occurs in much the same way in humans. With the help of autophagy, the cells of our body receive the missing energy and building resources, mobilizing internal reserves. Autophagy is involved in the removal of damaged cellular structures, which is important for maintaining normal cell function. Also, this process is one of the mechanisms of programmed cell death. Autophagy disorders may underlie cancer and Parkinson's disease. In addition, autophagy is aimed at combating intracellular infectious agents, for example, the causative agent of tuberculosis. Perhaps thanks to the fact that yeast once revealed to us the secret of autophagy, we will get a cure for these and other diseases.

The Nobel Committee has announced the winners of the 2017 Physiology or Medicine Prize today. This year the award will once again travel to the US, with Michael Young of the Rockefeller University in New York, Michael Rosbash of Brandeis University and Geoffrey Hall of the University of Maine sharing the award. According to the decision of the Nobel Committee, these researchers were awarded "for their discoveries of the molecular mechanisms that control circadian rhythms."

It must be said that in the entire 117-year history of the Nobel Prize, this is perhaps the first prize for the study of the sleep-wake cycle, as well as for anything related to sleep in general. The famous somnologist Nathaniel Kleitman did not receive the award, and Eugene Azerinsky, who made the most outstanding discovery in this area, who discovered REM sleep (REM - rapid eye movement, rapid sleep phase), generally received only a PhD degree for his achievement. It is not surprising that in numerous forecasts (we wrote about them in our article) there were any names and any research topics, but not those that attracted the attention of the Nobel Committee.

What was the award for?

So, what are circadian rhythms and what exactly did the laureates discover, who, according to the secretary of the Nobel Committee, greeted the news of the award with the words “Are you kidding me?”.

Geoffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash, Michael Young

Circa diem translated from Latin as "around the day". It so happened that we live on planet Earth, where day is replaced by night. And in the course of adapting to different conditions of day and night, organisms developed an internal biological clock - the rhythms of the biochemical and physiological activity of the organism. It was only in the 1980s that it was possible to show that these rhythms had an exclusively internal nature by sending mushrooms into orbit. Neurospora crassa. Then it became clear that circadian rhythms do not depend on external light or other geophysical signals.

The genetic mechanism of circadian rhythms was discovered in the 1960s–1970s by Seymour Benzer and Ronald Konopka, who studied mutant lines of fruit flies with different circadian rhythms: in wild-type flies, circadian rhythm fluctuations had a period of 24 hours, in some mutants - 19 hours, in others - 29 hours, and the third had no rhythm at all. It turned out that rhythms are regulated by the gene PER - period. The next step, which helped to understand how such fluctuations in the circadian rhythm are created and maintained, was taken by the current laureates.

Self-adjusting clockwork

Geoffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash suggested that the gene encoded period PER protein blocks the work of its own gene, and such a feedback loop allows the protein to prevent its own synthesis and cyclically, continuously regulate its level in cells.

The picture shows the sequence of events over 24 hours of fluctuation. When the gene is active, PER mRNA is produced. It exits the nucleus into the cytoplasm, becoming a template for the production of the PER protein. The PER protein accumulates in the cell nucleus when the activity of the period gene is blocked. This closes the feedback loop.

The model was very attractive, but a few pieces of the puzzle were missing to complete the picture. To block the activity of a gene, the protein needs to get into the nucleus of the cell, where the genetic material is stored. Jeffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash showed that the PER protein accumulates overnight in the nucleus, but did not understand how it managed to get there. In 1994, Michael Young discovered the second circadian rhythm gene, timeless(English "timeless"). It codes for the TIM protein, which is essential for our internal clock to function properly. In his elegant experiment, Young demonstrated that only by binding to each other, TIM and PER paired can enter the cell nucleus, where they block the gene period.

Simplified illustration of the molecular components of circadian rhythms

This feedback mechanism explained the reason for the appearance of oscillations, but it was not clear what controls their frequency. Michael Young found another gene double time. It contains the DBT protein, which can delay the accumulation of the PER protein. This is how fluctuations are “debugged” so that they coincide with the daily cycle. These discoveries revolutionized our understanding of the key mechanisms of the human biological clock. Over the following years, other proteins were found that influence this mechanism and maintain its stable operation.

Now the prize in physiology or medicine is traditionally awarded at the very beginning of the Nobel week, on the first Monday in October. It was first awarded in 1901 to Emil von Behring for the development of a serum therapy for diphtheria. In total, the prize has been awarded 108 times throughout history, in nine cases: in 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1921, 1925, 1940, 1941 and 1942, the prize was not awarded.

Between 1901 and 2017, the prize was awarded to 214 scientists, a dozen of whom are women. So far, there has not been a case of someone receiving a prize in medicine twice, although there have been cases when an already acting laureate was nominated (for example, our Ivan Pavlov). Excluding the 2017 award, the average age of the laureate was 58 years. The youngest Nobel laureate in the field of physiology and medicine was the 1923 laureate Frederick Banting (award for the discovery of insulin, age 32), the oldest was the 1966 laureate Peyton Rose (award for the discovery of oncogenic viruses, age 87 years).

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded to scientists James Allison and Tasuko Honjo, who have developed new methods for cancer immunotherapy, according to the Nobel Committee at the Karolinska Institute of Medicine.

"The 2018 Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to James Ellison and Tasuku Hondzt for their discoveries of cancer therapy by inhibiting negative immune regulation," a spokesman for the committee told TASS at the awards ceremony.

Scientists have developed a method of treating cancer by slowing down the inhibitory mechanisms of the immune system. Ellison studied a protein that could slow down the immune system and found it possible to activate the system by neutralizing the protein. Khondze, who worked in parallel with him, discovered the presence of protein in immune cells.

Scientists have created the basis for new approaches in the treatment of cancer, which will become a new milestone in the fight against tumors, the Nobel Committee believes.

Tasuku Honjo was born in 1942 in Kyoto, in 1966 he graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of Kyoto University, which is considered one of the most prestigious in Japan. After receiving his doctorate, he worked for several years as a visiting scholar in the Department of Embryology at the Carnegie Institution in Washington. Since 1988 he has been a professor at Kyoto University.

James Ellison was born in 1948 in the USA. He is a professor at the University of Texas and head of the Department of Immunology at the M.D. Anderson in Houston, Texas.

According to the rules of the foundation, the names of all candidates presented for the award in 2018 will be available only after 50 years. It is almost impossible to predict them, but from year to year experts name their favorites, RIA Novosti reports.

The press service of the Nobel Foundation also reported that on Tuesday, October 2, and Wednesday, October 3, the Nobel Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will name the winners in physics and chemistry.

The Nobel Laureate in Literature will be announced in 2019 because of who is responsible for this work.

On Friday, October 5, in Oslo, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will name the winner or winners of the award for their work to promote peace. This time there are 329 candidates on the list, of which 112 are public and international organizations.

The week of awarding the prestigious award will end on October 8 in Stockholm, where the winner in the field of economics will be named at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The amount of each of the Nobel Prizes in 2018 is 9 million Swedish kronor, which is about 940 thousand US dollars.

Work on the lists of candidates is carried out almost all year round. Every year in September, many professors from different countries, as well as academic institutions and former Nobel laureates, receive letters inviting them to participate in the nomination of candidates.

After that, from February to October, work is underway on the submitted nominations, compiling a list of candidates and voting on the choice of laureates.

The list of candidates is confidential. The names of the awardees are announced in early October.

The awards ceremony takes place in Stockholm and Oslo always on December 10 - the day of the death of the founder Alfred Nobel.

In 2017, 11 people who work in the US, UK, Switzerland, and one organization, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons ICAN, became the winners of the award.

Last year, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to American economist Richard Thaler for teaching the world.

Among the doctors - laureates of the award was a Norwegian scientist and doctor, who arrived in Crimea as part of a large delegation. It is about awarding a prize when visiting the international children's center "Artek".

President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sergeev, that Russia, like the USSR, is being deprived of Nobel Prizes, the situation around which is politicized.