James Allison and Japan's Tasuko Hongo won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their discovery of a breakthrough in the immune system's fight against cancer. Their research in the 1990s led to new, highly developed treatments for cancer, such as skin and lung cancer, which were difficult to treat in the past.
"The critical findings of the two winners are a milestone in our fight against cancer," said the Nobel Society at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. "Allison and Hongo explained how different strategies can be used to discourage immune system brakes in cancer treatment," she said. The award is worth nine million Swedish crowns ($ 1 million). The Nobel Prize for Medicine is the first Nobel Prize awarded every year. The winners studied proteins that prevent the body and key immune cells, known as T cells, from attacking tumor cells effectively.
"This treatment, which changed the rules of the game in the fight against cancer, has revolutionized the thinking of many other means by which the immune system can be used, or the launch of its anti-cancer capabilities," said Dan Davis, a professor of immunology at the University of Manchester. And other diseases, I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, many treatments of this kind loom on the horizon ».