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Business News/ Politics / News/  Cancer victim wins Nobel prize for medicine
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Cancer victim wins Nobel prize for medicine

Cancer victim wins Nobel prize for medicine

The three winners: (from left) Bruce Alan Beutler, Jules A. Hoffmann and Ralph Steinman.Premium

The three winners: (from left) Bruce Alan Beutler, Jules A. Hoffmann and Ralph Steinman.

Stockholm: Ascientist who won the Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday for work on fighting cancer died of the disease himself just three days before he could be told of his award, and after using his own discoveries to extend his life.

Canadian-born Ralph Steinman, 68, had been treating himself with a groundbreaking therapy based on his own research into the body’s immune system but died on Friday after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer. His colleagues at Rockefeller University in New York called it a “bittersweet" honour.

The Nobel Committee at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, which does not make posthumous awards, said it was aware of Steinman’s death; but it appeared that it had not known before making its announcement. It is likely that Steinman died without being aware he had won science’s ultimate accolade, along with American Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann of France.

The three winners: (from left) Bruce Alan Beutler, Jules A. Hoffmann and Ralph Steinman.

“The Nobel Foundation has recognised Ralph Steinman for his seminal discoveries concerning the body’s immune responses," said Rockerfeller University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne.

“But the news is bittersweet, as we also learned this morning from Ralph’s family that he passed a few days ago after a long battle with cancer," he added.

The institution said in a statement: “Steinman passed away on September 30. He was 68. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer four years ago, and his life was extended using a dendritic-cell based immunotherapy of his own design."

Alexis Steinman, indicating that her father had not known on his deathbed of the impending decision in Stockholm, said: “We are all so touched that our father’s many years of hard work are being recognized with a Nobel Prize. He devoted his life to his work and his family and he would be truly honoured."

Beutler and Hoffmann, who studied the first stages of the body’s immune responses to attack in the 1990s, shared the $1.5 million award with Steinman, originally from Montreal, whose discovery of dendritic cells in the 1970s is key to understanding the body’s next line of defence against disease.

“This year’s Nobel laureates have revolutionized our understanding of the immune system by discovering key principles for its activation," the award panel at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said in a statement in Stockholm.

Lars Klareskog, who chairs the prize-giving panel, told Reuters before the news of Steinman’s death: “I am very excited about what these discoveries mean. I think that we will have new, better vaccines against microbes and that is very much needed now with the increased resistance against antibiotics."

Beutler, 53, is based at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Luxembourg-born Hoffmann, 70, conducted much of his work in Strasbourg. They were supposed to share half the 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.46 million) of prize-money. The rest should have gone to Steinman, though the unusual circumstances leave its fate now in some doubt.

Beutler told Reuters he had learned of his prize by email and had to search online to make sure it was true: “I finally found it on Google News. My name was all over the place."

Of his work, he said, it “might lead to new treatments for inflammatory and auto-immune disease and possibly new treatments for other kinds of diseases as well".

The work of all three scientists has been pivotal to the development of improved types of vaccines against infectious diseases and novel approaches to fighting cancer. The research has helped lay the foundations for a new wave of “therapeutic vaccines" that stimulate the immune system to attack tumours.

Better understanding of the complexities of the immune system has also given clues for treating inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, where the components of the self-defence system end up attacking the body’s own tissues.

Beutler and Hoffmann discovered in the 1990s that receptor proteins act as a first line of defence, innate immunity, by recognising bacteria and other microorganisms. Steinman’s work, explained how, if required, dendritic cells in the next phase, adaptive immunity, kill off infections that break through.

Understanding dendritic cells led to the launch of the first therapeutic cancer vaccine last year, Dendreon’s Provenge, which treats men with advanced prostate cancer. Medicine, or physiology, is usually the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year. Prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901 in accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel.

The award citation noted that the world’s scientists had long been searching for the “gatekeepers" of immune response.

Reuters

—Additional reporting by en Hirschler in London and Mia Shanley in Stockholm have contributed to the article

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Published: 04 Oct 2011, 12:54 AM IST
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