Stockholm (AFP)

Which Nobel Prize for Medicine for 2020, the year of the worst pandemic in a century?

The award announced in Stockholm on Monday opens a Nobel season full of suspense, from literature to peace.

As every year, medicine is the first to shine at around 11:30 am in Stockholm (9:30 am GMT), before physics on Tuesday and chemistry on Wednesday.

At the end of the week will follow the two most anticipated awards: Literature Thursday and Peace Friday, in Oslo.

These last two, arguably the most famous awards in the world, are usually the focus of attention.

But 2020, the year of a pandemic that has made medical science a subject of daily questioning around the world, is exceptional.

"The pandemic is a great crisis for humanity" which "illustrates how important science is", noted Lars Heikensten, head of the Nobel Foundation, which has been organizing the prizes for more than a century on the basis of the testament of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.

However, it is unlikely that a price will crown work directly related to Covid-19.

"We are not influenced in any way by what is going on in the world at the moment," Erling Norrby, former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, who also heads the most recently created prize, told AFP. economy, delivered the following Monday.

"It takes time for a price to mature, often ten years so that we have the necessary hindsight to understand the real impact" of a discovery, underlines the Swedish expert, himself a virologist.

The nomination process is absolutely secret and the Academy does not disclose any of the several hundred nominations it receives each year from qualified people around the world.

Experts, journalists and punters are therefore reduced to speculation.

This year, the best Swedish and international "nobelologists" would see the medicine prize going to the tandem formed by the Australian of French origin Jacques Miller and the American Max Cooper, laureates of the prestigious American Lasker Prize last year.

- Hepatitis, cancer or lymphocites?

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Both approaching 90 years - they are often considered as "forgotten" of the Nobel, they would be rewarded for having discovered B and T lymphocytes in the 60s, a considerable advance in research on immunology, in particular concerning cancers ... and viruses, including therefore to understand the Sars-CoV-2 responsible for Covid-19.

The American of Lebanese origin Huda Zoghbi could be rewarded for having identified the genetic origin of Rett syndrome, a disease appearing a few months after birth, mainly in girls, causing severe mental and motor disability.

Other women judged to be well placed: the Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Charpentier and the American Jennifer Doudna for the "CRISPR-Cas9", developed in 2012. Under this abstruse acronym hides a genetic tool making it possible to "cut" a specific gene, a revolution genetics with applications in human cells.

Their work could alternatively earn them a prize in chemistry.

Other "usual suspects": the Americans Dennis Slamon and Mary-Claire Kings (breast cancer), the Australian Marc Feldmann and the Briton of Indian origin Ravinder Maini (rheumatoid arthritis).

Unless the prize goes to virology, a star discipline in spite of itself of 2020?

Germany's Ralf Bartenschlager and Americans Charles Rice and Michael Sofia are in the running for their work on hepatitis C.

If the Nobel Prizes will be announced as planned this week, the coronavirus has led to the cancellation of the physical award ceremony on December 10 in Stockholm.

A first since 1944.

The winner (s) announced on Monday, who will share nearly a million euros, will receive their prize in their country of residence.

In medicine or in the five other award-winning fields, this 2020 edition is particularly open.

For peace, freedom of the press (Reporters Without Borders, Committee for the Protection of Journalists ...) or the climate, with the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future, are regularly mentioned to succeed the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Others predict a prize for a UN body, for example the World Health Organization, or for the Afghan Fawzia Koofi, feminist and human rights activist.

For literature, critics interviewed this year by AFP mentioned fifteen names, with profiles ranging from the American-Caribbean Jamaica Kincaid to the Albanian Ismaïl Kadaré through the Canadian Anne Carson.

Unless Michel Houellebecq or Maryse Condé, also cited, bring a sixteenth prize to France, at the head of the number of laureates in literature.

© 2020 AFP