Scientists behind game-changing cancer immunotherapies win Nobel medicine prize

STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) - American James Allison and Japanese Tasuku Honjo won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine on Monday for game-changing discoveries about how to harness and manipulate the immune system to fight cancer.

Monday, 1 Oct 2018

The scientists' work in the 1990s has since swiftly led to new and dramatically improved therapies for cancers such as melanoma and lung cancer, which had previously been extremely difficult to treat.

"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 (766,930 pounds).

Allison and Honjo showed releasing the brakes on the immune system can unleash its power to attack cancer. The resulting treatments, known as immune checkpoint blockade, have "fundamentally changed the outcome" for some advanced cancer patients," the Nobel institute said.

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 centre of the scandal guilty of rape and sentenced him to two years in jail.

REVOLUTIONISED CANCER TREATMENT

Allison's and Honjo's work focussed on proteins that act as brakes on the immune system - preventing the body's main immune cells, known as T-cells, from attacking tumours effectively.

Allison, a professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, worked on a protein known as CTLA-4 and realised that if this could be blocked, a brake would be released.

"It immediately occurred to me, and some of the people in my lab, that maybe we can use this to unleash the immune system to attack cancer cells," Allison told a news conference after getting the prize.

Honjo, a professor at Kyoto University since 1984, separately discovered a second protein called PD-1 and found that it too acted as an immune system brake, but with a different mechanism.

The discoveries led to the creation of a multibillion-dollar market for new cancer medicines.

Bristol-Myers Squibb's CTLA-4 therapy Yervoy was the first such drug to win approval, in 2011. However, it is medicines targeting PD-1 blockade that have proved a bigger commercial hit, led by Merck & Co's Keytruda in 2014.

These and rival drugs from Roche, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Sanofi now offer new options for patients with melanoma, lung and bladder cancers.

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.

Honjo, who is now 76, told a news conference in Tokyo he was honoured to get the Nobel, but his work was not yet done.

"I would like to keep on doing my research ...so that this immune treatment could save more cancer patients," he said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe congratulated Honjo in a phone call, telling him: "I believe the achievements of your research have given cancer patients hope and light."

Allison told a news conference he was in a "state of shock" hours after learning from his son that he had won a Nobel prize.

"As a basic scientist, to have my work really impact people is just one of the best things," he said. "I think it's everybody's dream. And I've been lucky enough to do work that is benefiting people now."

Commenting on the award, Kevin Harrington, a professor at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, said the work had revolutionised cancer treatment.

"We’ve gone from being in a situation where patients were effectively untreatable to having a range of immunotherapy options that, when they work, work very well indeed," he said in a statement. "For some patients we see their tumours shrink or completely disappear and are effectively cured."

Graphic of Nobel laureates: http://tmsnrt.rs/2y6ATVW

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2018/10/01/2018-nobel-medicine-prize-awarded-for-cancer-research/

'Gifts' from Chinese herbal medicine - Artemisinin

China's Tu Youyou has won the Nobel Medicine Prize for her development of the anti-malaria drug artemisinin


© Provided by AFP Barrels of artemisinin, a potent substanceextracted from the sweet wormwood's leaves for anti-malarial treatment, await processing into drugs in a wharehouse at Guilin Pharmaceutical, December 8, 2004 in Guilin, southern China's…

Derived from a herb used to treat fevers some 1,700 years ago, the anti-malaria drug artemisinin is one of many treatments plucked from the treasure chest of ancient Chinese medicine and repackaged for a modern age.

The compound revolutionised cures for a killer disease for which drug resistance is a major problem, and is credited with saving millions of lives.

On Monday it also earned its Chinese developer, Tu Youyou, a Nobel Medicine Prize.

"It is my dream that Chinese medicine will help us conquer life-threatening diseases worldwide, and that people across the globe will enjoy its benefits for health promotion," Tu wrote in a 2011 commentary in the science journal Nature Medicine.

Her own work was a step in this direction -- Tu's research gave millions access to the anti-malarial action of a herb known by its scientific name Artemisia annua, or commonly as qinghao, wormwood or "sweet Annie".

Artemisinin replaced chloroquine and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine after the Plasmodium parasite, which causes malaria, developed resistance to both.

Today, it is the main drug in the arsenal against the disease with an estimated 200 million cases and nearly 600,000 deaths per year.

"By the late 1960s, efforts to eradicate malaria had failed and the disease was on the rise," said the Nobel Assembly.

Tu and a team investigated more than 2,000 Chinese herb preparations and at first identified 640 that had possible antimalarial activity -- but with no significant results in experiments with mice except for one: Artemisia annua extract.

But when these promising results could not be replicated, the team were befuddled.

They turned to ancient Chinese literature for help, finding the answer in the writings of alchemist Ge Hong, who died in the year 343.

In "A Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies," Ge described Artemisia's properties for reducing the symptoms of malaria and gave this tip: "A handful of qinghao immersed with two litres of water, wring out the juice and drink it all."

Centuries later, his words were a lightbulb moment.

"This sentence gave me the idea that the heating involved in the conventional extraction step we had used might have destroyed the active components," said Tu.

"Extraction at a lower temperature might be necessary to preserve antimalarial activity."

Using a new, lower-temperature method, "we obtained much better activity", she said, showing that the properties of wormwood hailed by previous generations were, indeed, based in science.

- 'A true gift' -

This all happened at the height of the Mao Zedong's chaotic 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, which saw large numbers of people, including academics, persecuted.

The team had no way to test the product on conventional lab animals, but they were so confident in its safety that they tested it on themselves.

Their courage paved the way to clinical trials in Hainan among patients infected with the parasite.

"Artemisinin... is a true gift from old Chinese medicine," Tu said in the 2011 article.

"But this is not the only instance in which the wisdom of Chinese medicine has borne fruit."

Indeed, we have China to thank for a wide array of treatments that have made their way into mainstream Western medicine -- think acupuncture and massage, or tai chi and qi gong, two body-mind exercises.

- No fairy tale -

© Provided by AFP A sample of unprocessed sweet wormwood, a wild grass being processed by Guilin Pharmaceutical, into the finished product in a pill, December 19, 2004, in Beijing

In her article, Tu also cited a drug derived from the herb Huperzia serrata undergoing trials in Europe and the United States for treatment of Alzheimer's disease, and another herb, shenlian, which has shown promise in the treatment of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.

China's history with traditional medicine stretches back thousands of years -- but as with artemisinin, much of it has no orthodox science to back it. Yet.

But it may be exactly this openness to traditional ways that unlocks important future discoveries.

China is well placed to exploit the potential, say some commentators.

Conventional medicine in China today "has an interesting relationship with herbalists and other aspects of traditional Chinese medicine like acupuncture," parasitology expert Colin Sutherland of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told AFP.

"They don't see it as a completely fairy tale world," he said.

"So I think they are in a much better position in China to see that there is an herbal medicine that does seem to have some advantages... components they can turn into a pharmaceutical product."

Tu herself underwent two and a half years of training in Chinese medicine for professionals with a background in Western medicine.

http://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/world/gifts-from-chinese-herbal-medicine/


This post is on Healthwise

Mo Yan's Nobel win a big boost to village

Published: Saturday October 12, 2013 MYT 4:14:00 PM
Updated: Saturday October 12, 2013 MYT 4:52:23 PM

by zhao ruixue

Tourists visit the set of a TV series based on 'Red Sorghum Clan', one of Mo Yan's novels, in Gaomi, Shandong province, during the recent National Day holidays. – China Daily

A year after winning the Nobel Literature Prize, Mo Yan continues to command the attention of his compatriots who flock to his home village.

CHINESE people had never paid more attention to the annual Nobel literature award – which on Thursday went to Canadian writer Alice Munro – than they did last year when Mo Yan became China's first winner of the prize.

One year on, and the ripple effect has not subsided. Tourists continue to flock to Mo's home village in Gaomi, Shandong province, which has been transformed since the author was catapulted to top place in the literary world.

Mo Yan. – AFP

Visiting the village is to walk into the world he created in Red Sorghum Clan, one of his best-known novels, adapted for the award-winning film Red Sorghum by acclaimed director Zhang Yimou in 1987.

Some 210ha of red sorghum is ready for harvesting, recalling this scene Mo depicted in the novel: "In the deep autumn of the eighth month under a high, magnificently clear sky, the land is covered by sorghum that forms a glittering sea of blood. When the sun comes out, the surface of the sea shimmers, and heaven and Earth are painted with extraordinarily rich, extraordinarily majestic colours."

Locals have planted the sorghum for the ongoing shooting of the novel's TV adaptation starring actress Zhou Xun, in similar fashion to 1987 when Zhang's film was shot.

But while the sorghum fields disappeared after the film was made, this time they may remain.

"We have signed long-term contracts to sell sorghum to wine producers," said Zhang Xinfu, head of Xianjia village, administered by the Jiaohe River Shugang Logistics Area. Mo Yan's hometown is in the area.

"Dozens of wine producers came to discuss the sorghum business after Mo Yan won the prize," said Zhang, who set up the Gaomi Dongbei Township Red Sorghum Cooperative early this year.

Zhang said the wine producers promised to pay a satisfactory price for the sorghum.

Chu Hongpeng, deputy director of the Jiaohe River Shugang Logistics Area committee, said about 10,000 people visited Mo's old house and the red sorghum fields every day during the week-long National Day holidays from Oct 1 to 7.

Chu said a typical tourist route includes Mo's house, the sorghum fields, the shooting base for the Red Sorghum TV series, and several scenes in Mo's novels, such as Ping'anzhuang village church.

Guan Moxin, Mo's elder brother, said: "Thousands of tourists came to visit the house every day during the National Day holiday," adding that he had to keep the premises open until 8pm.

Walls have been refurbished although Mo has repeatedly declined local government repair offers.

A plank bearing the words "Mo Yan's Old House" and a Lunar New Year painting in the flapping-ash style that represents a local folk art listed as a national intangible heritage, hang on the wall.

In front of the house stand booths where Mo's books and local folk arts are sold, including clay sculptures and paper-cuts.

The makers of the film and TV series are also cashing in on Mo's Nobel Prize success, even though adaptations face challenges from audiences' high expectations.

One example is the TV adaptation of Red Sorghum Clan that tells of the struggles of three generations of a rural family between 1923 and 1976, a time of great upheaval.

Although believing the story was ideal for a good TV drama, director Zheng Xiaolong admitted coming under great pressure.

"Sometimes I didn't sleep for days," he said on the set in Gaomi. – China Daily/Asia News Network

http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Books/News/2013/10/12/Mo-Yans-Nobel-win-a-big-boost-to-village.aspx

A clever move - Alice Munro

Published: Tuesday October 15, 2013 MYT 12:00:00 AM
Updated: Tuesday October 15, 2013 MYT 7:32:49 AM

by akshita nanda

At the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany last week, the German publisher of Alice Munro’s books, Fischer Publishing, was inundated by the press when Munro’s Nobel Prize win was announced. — EPA

SOME say Canadian author Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize for Literature is a win for female writers and the short story form. I say the true winner this year is the Swedish Academy.

The choice of Munro validates an award that lately seems increasingly irrelevant to the reading world.

Past choices such as Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer (2011) have made it seem that the Nobel committee roots for the obscure and painfully worthy rather than the readable.

Part of the problem is of course the Swedish Academy’s tight-lipped nature, which often unfairly tars the chosen writer with the brush of obscurity.

Other high-profile literary awards such as Britain’s two big ones, the Man Booker Award and Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize), announce a longlist and shortlist in the run-up to the official announcement, which shapes media buzz and sparks public interest in the authors.

“With the Nobel Lit Prize, it’s really anyone’s guess,” says Felicia Low-Jimenez, 34, merchandising division manager of Books at Kinokuniya Singapore.

As a result, publishers and retailers lose opportunities to market authors and win readers’ favour.

In contrast, Munro, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International prize, sells herself.

The 82-year-old has 17 volumes of stories popular enough to be already well-represented in bookstores in Malaysia and Singapore.

Last year’s collection, Dear Life, just won Ontario’s Trillium Book Award and two of her short stories have been made into movies – Hateship, Loveship, which just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Away From Her (2006), starring Julie Christie.

Her life story is equally appealing. She picked tobacco to support herself in university, wrote in between raising her children and also ran an independent bookstore for years.
Munro ticks so many boxes that her win almost outshines the rather disconcerting statistics surrounding the prize she won on Thursday.

Of the 106 times the Nobel Literature Prize has been awarded, sometimes to more than one author at the same time, it has gone to a female writer only 13 times, 10 times to writers from Asia and Africa and only once to a writer from both those niches – South African Nadine Gordimer in 1991.

Counting ethnically Asian writers such as V.S. Naipaul, a British citizen born and raised in Trinidad, and China-born Gao Xingjian, now a French citizen, only 10 authors have been chosen from the most populous continents in the world, with readerships that outstrip that of the West. And there is no shortage of genius on either continent, acknowledged by thousands of readers, if not by the Swedish Academy, for a lifetime’s achievement.

For readers like me, significant omissions from the list of laureates include Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, who died this March, and Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who died in 2006.
Since Nobels for literature cannot be awarded posthumously, waiting in the wings are the widely read F. Sionil Jose from the Philippines and Japan’s Haruki Murakami, a hot favourite for years.

Singapore writer Felix Cheong, 48, thinks “the Swedish Academy have something against writers being ‘popular’.”

Whether or not this is the case, the academy itself is not as popular as it could be, if it widened its reading and made the selection process more obvious and open.

Last year’s winner Mo Yan was slammed by past laureates such as Herta Muller for his reported willingness to toe the party line in China.

This year’s Nobel Literature laureate is instead being hailed by readers and writers from Salman Rushdie to Joyce Carol Oates as a voice for short story writers worldwide. By proxy, the committee that chose Munro is also being covered with glory.

It is a clever move and hopefully one that signals that the Swedish Academy is about to broaden its horizons and re-think how best to follow Alfred Nobel’s mandate to honour “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”.

It all depends on next year’s winner and whether the Nobel committee’s choice keeps the re-awakened interest of readers. – The Straits Times, Singapore/Asia News Network

http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Books/News/2013/10/15/A-clever-move.aspx

Alice Munro wins Nobel Literature Prize

Published: Friday October 11, 2013 MYT 1:10:00 PM
Updated: Friday October 11, 2013 MYT 1:35:50 PM

by peter harmsen

Alice Munro is just the 13th woman to win the Nobel Literature Prize since it was first awarded in 1901.

First-time win for Canadian literature.

CANADA’S Alice Munro won the Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday for her short stories that focus on the frailties of the human condition, just the 13th woman to win the coveted award.

The Swedish Academy described Munro, 82, as a “master of the contemporary short story”, a genre that has only rarely been honoured with the world’s most prestigious literary prize.

Munro said she was “just terribly surprised” – and delighted – to learn that she had won the Nobel, after being woken by her daughter with the news.

“I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win,” she said, in comments reported by the Canadian broadcaster CBC.

She said she always viewed winning the Nobel as “one of those pipe dreams” that “might happen, but it probably wouldn’t”.

The Swedish Academy was not immediately able to reach Munro with the happy news, and eventually resorted to Twitter in search of the elusive laureate.

After a three-hour quest the academy finally managed to reach her, according to a spokesman.

The Swedish Academy hailed Munro’s “finely tuned storytelling, which is characterised by clarity and psychological realism”.

“Some critics consider her a Canadian Chekhov,” it said.

“Her stories are often set in small town environments, where the struggle for a socially acceptable existence often results in strained relationships and moral conflicts – problems that stem from generational differences and colliding life ambitions.”

Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, spoke of Munro’s “phenomenal” intelligence and capacity for introspection.

“There is a kind of tenderness in her writing,” he told reporters.

“She writes about ordinary people with all their flaws and shortcomings, and yet with her tender approach she tells us the truth about people in a way so we can handle it.”

Munro’s works include Who Do You Think You Are? (1978), The Moons Of Jupiter (1982), Runaway (2004), The View From Castle Rock (2006) and Too Much Happiness (2009).

The collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) became the basis of the 2006 film Away from Her directed by Sarah Polley. Munro’s most recent collection is Dear Life (2012).

Born on July 10, 1931 in Ontario, Canada, she grew up in the countryside.

At just 11 years old, she decided she wanted to be a writer, and never wavered in her career choice.

“I think maybe I was successful in doing this because I didn’t have any other talents,” she once said in an interview posted on YouTube.

“I’m not really an intellectual,” Munro said. “I was an okay housewife but I wasn’t that great. There was never anything else that I was really drawn to doing so nothing interfered in the way life interferes for so many people.”

Her focus on writing means she does not revel in book-signing events or other publicity work.

“She is not a socialite. She is actually rarely seen in public, and does not go on book tours,” commented American literary critic David Homel.
Munro herself has said she writes about the “underbelly of relationships”.

She said she sets her stories in Canada “because I live life here at a level of irritation which I would not achieve in a place that I knew less well”.

“There are no such things as big and little subjects,” she has said. “The major things, the evils, that exist in the world have a direct relationship to the evil that exists around a dining room table when people are doing things to each other.”

In 2009, Munro won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize for her body of work.

Tipped as one of the favourites in the days before Thursday’s announcement, Munro is just the 13th woman to win the Nobel Literature Prize since it was first awarded in 1901.

The last woman to receive it was Herta Mueller of Germany in 2009.

She is also the first Canadian to win the prestigious honour. Saul Bellow, who won the Nobel Literature Prize in 1976, was born in Canada, but had become a US citizen by the time he was awarded the prize.

Munro will receive the prize sum of 8mil Swedish kronor (RM3.9mil).

She will be presented with her award at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on Dec 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.

Last year, the award went to Chinese novelist Mo Yan. – AFP

http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Books/News/2013/10/11/Alice-Munro-wins-Nobel-Literature-Prize.aspx

Canada's Munro wins Nobel literature prize for her short stories

Published: Friday October 11, 2013 MYT 4:01:06 AM
Updated: Friday October 11, 2013 MYT 4:01:10 AM

by sven nordenstam AND cameron French

File photo of Canadian writer Alice Munro smiling at the end of the Giller awards ceremony in Toronto in this November 6, 2007. REUTERS/Mike Cassese/Files

STOCKHOLM/TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday for her tales of the struggles, loves and tragedies of women in small-town Canada that made her what the award-giving committee called the "master of the contemporary short story."

"Some critics consider her a Canadian Chekhov," the Swedish Academy said in announcing the award on its website, comparing Munro to the 19th-century Russian short story writer.

The 82-year-old Munro, who revealed in 2009 that she had undergone coronary bypass surgery and cancer treatment, said it was "surprising and wonderful" to receive the award.

"I am dazed by all the attention and affection that has been coming my way this morning," she said in a statement. "I hope it fosters further interest in all Canadian writers. I also hope that this brings further recognition to the short story form."

Despite the honour and attention it would bring to her work, she told CBC News that the award would not change the decision she announced earlier this year to retire from writing.

SHORT, BUT RICH, STORIES

The short story, a style more popular in the 19th and early 20th century, has long taken a back seat to the novel in popular tastes.

Munro's merit, in the eyes of her admirers, was to introduce into her stories a richness of plot and depth of detail usually more characteristic of novels.

The characters in her stories are often girls and women who lead seemingly unexceptional lives but struggle with tribulations ranging from sexual abuse and stifling marriages to repressed love and the ravages of aging.

"Suddenly you find yourself being fascinated by the life of this chambermaid, or this bean farmer, or this Vancouver housewife," Douglas Gibson, her longtime editor and publisher, said in a CBC interview. "These are ordinary people, ordinary stories, but she has the magic."

The award triggered an outpouring of pride in Canada. Social media website Twitter was flooded with congratulations.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement, "I am certain that Ms. Munro's tremendous body of work and this premier accomplishment will serve to inspire Canadian writers of all ranks to pursue literary excellence and their passion for the written word."

Reporters who gathered early on Thursday at the hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, where Munro was staying were asked to leave by hotel staff, who said she did not want to be disturbed.

EPIPHANIES

Born in 1931 in Wingham, a small town in the region of southwestern Ontario that serves as the setting for many of her stories, Munro started writing in her teens and has published more than a dozen short-story collections over the years.

Munro's works include "Lives of Girls and Women" in 1971, "Runaway" in 2004 and "Too Much Happiness" five years later.

Her story "The Bear Came over the Mountain, from her 2001 collection "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage," was adapted into the Oscar-nominated film "Away from Her," directed by Sarah Polley.

Munro becomes the second Canadian-born writer to win the Nobel for Literature, although she is the first winner to be thought of as distinctly Canadian. Saul Bellow, who won the award in 1976, was born in Quebec but raised in Chicago and is widely considered an American writer.

"Her texts often feature depictions of everyday but decisive events, epiphanies of a kind, that illuminate the surrounding story and let existential questions appear in a flash of lightning," the Nobel Academy said in appraising Munro.

That sentiment was echoed by fellow Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, who described Munro in a 2008 tribute as being among the major writers of fiction in our time.

"Munro has been among those writers subject to periodic rediscovery, at least outside Canada. It's as if she jumps out of a cake - Surprise! - and then has to jump out of it again, and then again," Atwood wrote.

The former Alice Laidlaw married James Munro in 1951 and moved to Victoria, where the two ran a bookstore that still operates today. They had four daughters - one died just hours after being born - before divorcing in 1972. Afterwards, Munro moved back to Ontario.

Her second husband, geographer Gerald Fremlin, died this past April, which her publisher Gibson said factored in to her decision to quite writing this year. Munro also threatened to retire in 2006, but then changed her mind and published two more collections.

"She lost her husband in the spring and she's quite frail. And when she said 'no more' this time I believe her. I didn't believe it the first time, but I believe it now," he said.

The literature prize, which comes with an award of 8 million crowns ($1.25 million), is the fourth of this year's crop of Nobel prizes, which were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swede who invented dynamite. The prizes were awarded for the first time in 1901.

Munro also won the Man Booker International Prize in 2009, and has won the Giller Prize - Canada's most high-profile literary award - twice.

(With additional reporting by Niklas Pollard in Stockholm, Euan Rocha and Allison Martell in Toronto and Jennifer Kwan in Victoria; Editing by Alistair Scrutton, Ralph Boulton and Michael Roddy, Jeffrey Hodgson and Vicki Allen)

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/2013/10/11/Alice-Munro-wins-Nobel-prize-for-literature--Academy.aspx

Alice Munro seen as master of the short story

Published: Thursday October 10, 2013 MYT 7:41:07 PM
Updated: Thursday October 10, 2013 MYT 7:42:43 PM

by cameron French

File photo of Canadian writer Alice Munro smiling at the end of the Giller awards ceremony in Toronto in this November 6, 2007. REUTERS/Mike Cassese/Files

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian writer Alice Munro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday, is an admitted short-story addict who has garnered international praise for her tales of the struggles, loves and tragedies of women in small-town Canada.

She became the second Canadian-born writer to win the prize, although she is the first winner with a distinctly Canadian identity. Saul Bellow, who won the award in 1976, was born in Quebec, but raised in Chicago and is widely considered an American writer.

The 82-year-old Munro, who won the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 and was often mentioned as a Nobel contender, stands out in a literary world that tends to reward novels.

She told the Wall Street Journal in 2009, after winning the Man Booker prize, that she used to attempt to write novels but "didn't get anywhere."

"The novel would always break down about halfway through and I would lose interest in it, and it didn't seem any good and I wouldn't persist," she told the paper.

Instead, she published a series of highly praised short story collections, beginning with 1968's "Dance of the Happy Shades."

In addition to the Man Booker, she has won the Giller Prize - Canada's most high-profile literary award - twice, and has won Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction three times.

In 2009 she removed her collection "Too Much Happiness" from Giller consideration, saying she wanted to give younger, less-established authors an opportunity.

She was largely ignored early in her career by international audiences, but began building a reputation when her stories started getting published in the New Yorker magazine in the 1970s.

Her noted works include "Lives of Girls and Women" (1973), "The Love of a Good Woman" (1998) and "Runaway" (2004). A collection of her work, "Too Much Happiness: Stories," was published in 2009.

Earlier this year, Munro, who in 2009 revealed she had undergone heart bypass surgery and had been treated for cancer, said she was retiring from writing.

She said the same thing in 2006, but went on to publish "Too Much Happiness" in 2009 and her most recent collection, "Dear Life," in 2012.

SHORT BUT DENSE STORIES

Munro is known for her ability to develop characters fully in the expanse of a short story.

Comparing her to other writers, author Joyce Carol Oates described Munro's stories in a New York Times review as having "the density - moral, emotional, sometimes historical - of other writers' novels."

Munro, Oates wrote, scripts "fictitious worlds that are mimetic paradigms of utterly real worlds yet are fictions, composed with so assured an art that it might be mistaken for artlessness."

Munro has often explored the theme of girls coming of age in small-town Canada - a setting in which she grew up.

Born in Wingham, a small town in southwestern Ontario, in 1931 to a family of farmers, Munro's other works include "Dance of the Happy Shades" (1968), "Who Do You Think You Are?" (1978), and "Open Secret" (1994), which won the W.H. Smith Award for the best book published in Britain in 1995.

Accepting a prize in 1998, she said she "can't kick the habit" of writing short fiction.

Munro met her first husband at the University of Western Ontario and after two years, the two moved to Canada's Pacific Coast. She returned to Ontario in 1972 and married Gerald Fremlin in 1976.

(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Doina Chiacu)

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/2013/10/10/Alice-Munro-seen-as-master-of-the-short-story.aspx

Canada's Alice Munro Wins Nobel Literature Prize

by The Associated Press

October 10, 2013 4:19 PM

 

STOCKHOLM (AP) — If there were a literary award bigger than the Nobel Prize, Alice Munro would probably win that, too.

"Among writers, her name is spoken in hushed tones," fellow Canadian author Margaret Atwood once wrote. "She's the kind of writer about whom it is often said — no matter how well known she becomes — that she ought to be better known."

Munro, 82, was awarded literature's highest honor Thursday, saluted by the Nobel committee as a thorough but forgiving chronicler of the human spirit, and her selection marks a number of breakthroughs.

She is the first winner of the $1.2 million prize to be fully identified with Canada. Saul Bellow won in 1976, but though he was born in Canada, he moved to the U.S. as a boy and is more closely associated with Chicago.

Munro is also the rare author to win for short stories.

"When I began writing there was a very small community of Canadian writers and little attention was paid by the world. Now Canadian writers are read, admired and respected around the globe," Munro said in a statement issued by her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. She said she hopes the Nobel "fosters further interest in all Canadian writers" and "brings further recognition to the short story form."

Her books having sold more than 1 million copies in the U.S. alone, she has long been an international ambassador for the short story, proof that the narrative arc and depth of characterization expected from a novel can be realized in just 30 to 40 pages.

Critics and peers have praised her in every way a writer can be praised: the precision of her language; the perfection of detail; the surprise and logic of her storytelling; the graceful, seamless shifts of moods; the intimacy with every shade of human behavior.

Her stories are usually set in Ontario, her home province. Among her best-known is "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," about a woman who begins losing her memory and agrees with her husband that she should be put in a nursing home. Canadian actress-director Sarah Polley adapted the story into the 2006 film "Away from Her," starring Julie Christie.

The narrative begins in a relatively tender, traditional mood. But we soon learn that the husband has been unfaithful in the past and didn't always regret it — "What he felt was mainly a gigantic increase in well-being." The wife, meanwhile, has fallen for a man at the nursing home.

In the story "Dimensions," Munro introduces a chambermaid named Doree, who needs to take three buses for a visit to a "facility" outside Clinton, Ontario. Munro explains that Doree is happy in her work, that she has been told she is "young and decent looking" and that her picture was once in the newspaper, in the days when her spiked blonde hair was wavy and brown.

"Dimensions" begins in close-up, then steadily pulls back. With every page, the story darkens, and terrifies. The "facility" is an institution where Doree's husband is held. Doree's picture was in the paper because her husband murdered their children.

"In all the time since what had happened, any thought of the children had been something to get rid of, pull out immediately like a knife in the throat," Munro writes.

Munro won a National Book Critics Circle prize in 1998 for "The Love of a Good Woman" and was a finalist in 2001 for "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage." She is also a three-time winner of the Governor General's prize, Canada's highest literary honor.

Any further awards are likely to honorary. She told Canada's National Post in June that she was "probably not going to write anymore."

Her most recent collection, "Dear Life," came out in 2012.

Starting in the 1960s, when she was first published, she has often contrasted her youth in Wingham, a conservative town west of Toronto, and her life after the social upheaval of the '60s. Munro herself lived out the fears, and celebrated the liberation, of the educated housewives in Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique."

In an interview with The Associated Press in 2003, she described the '60s as "wonderful."

"Because, having been born in 1931, I was a little old, but not too old, and women like me after a couple of years were wearing miniskirts and prancing around," she said.

The daughter of a fox farmer and a teacher, she was born Alice Anne Laidlaw, a literary person in a nonliterary town, concealing her ambition like a forbidden passion.

She received a scholarship to study at the University of Western Ontario, majoring in journalism, and was still an undergraduate when she sold a story to CBC radio in Canada. She dropped out to marry a fellow student, James Munro, had three children and became a full-time housewife. By her early 30s, she was so confined, frightened and depressed that she could barely write a full sentence.

Her good fortune was to open a bookstore with her husband, in 1963. Stimulated by everything from the conversation of adults to simply filling out invoices, she saw her narrative talents resurface but her marriage collapse.

Her first collection, "Dance of the Happy Shades," came out in 1968 and won the Governor General's prize.

At least in her work, Munro is among the least political of Nobel winners, who in recent years have included Latin America's Mario Vargas Llosa and British novelist Doris Lessing. In 2003, she told the AP she was not inspired by current events but by memories, anecdotes, gossip. The stories themselves have few topical references or famous names.

"I don't do a lot of indicators where you can tell what time it is, because that would impinge on me too much. Somebody writing about now would have to have Iraq in it. They need to have the right music and right celebrities and right style of clothes," she said.

"In ordinary life I am a fairly active, political person. I have opinions and join clubs. But I always want to see what happens with people underneath; it interests me more."

The 2013 Nobel announcements continue Friday with the Nobel Peace Prize, followed by the economics prize on Monday.
______
Rising contributed from Stockholm and Italie from New York. Associated Press writer Karl Ritter also contributed to this report from Stockholm.

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=231346096

Nobel Peace Prize 2013

Tuesday, 15 October, 2013          

Yasmeen Aftab Ali

One year prior to his death in 1895, Nobel finalized his will. The relevant portion of the will, stating the criteria for what has later become known as the Nobel Peace Prize is:"och en del åt den som har verkat mest eller best för folkens förbrödrande och afskaffande eller minskning afstående armeer samt bildande och spridande af fredskongresser." (Swedish) "and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." (English translation)

According to the Nobelprize.Org; 92 Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded since 1901. It was not awarded on 19 occasions: in 1914-1918, 1923, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1939- 1943, 1948, 1955-1956, 1966-1967 and 1972. Why were the Peace Prizes not awarded in those years? In the statutes of the Nobel Foundation it says: "If none of the works under consideration is found to be of the importance indicated in the first paragraph, the prize money shall be reserved until the following year. If, even then, the prize cannot be awarded, the amount shall be added to the Foundation's restricted funds."

During World War I and II, fewer Nobel Prizes were awarded."The Vietnamese politician Le DucTho, awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, is the only person who has declined the Nobel Peace Prize. They were both awarded the Prize for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord. Le Doc Tho said that he was not in a position to accept the Nobel Prize, citing the situation in Vietnam as his reason. (Nobelprize.org)

Norwegian lawyer and activist Fredrik Heffermehl released a book Nobelsvilje (Nobel's Will). He critically assesses the prize's history and the political committee and process which now awards the Nobel Peace Prize. According to Heffermehl, prior to World War II about 85% of recipients were awarded in accordance with the will, but since the end of the war only 45% of the recipients fit the criteria. Recipients Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change do not suit the requirements, according to the author. Neither do Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank, nor Wangari Maathai. "Disarmament and anti-militarism was what Nobel wanted to promote," says Heffermehl to Aftenposten.

Talking of at least one notable Peace Prize recipient; President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize after being in office for 12 days as President in 2009. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said Obama had been awarded the prize for his calls to reduce the world’s stockpiles of nuclear weapons and work towards restarting the stalled Middle East peace process. The committee praised Obama for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” It was said, “Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.” (Ross Chainey: Reuters October 9, 2009) He further stated; despite his ambitious international agenda, Obama is yet to make a significant breakthrough in the Middle East or effectively deal with the threat of Iran’s nuclear programme and his country is currently fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There were 259 candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2013 and 50 of them were organizations. The winner for 2013 was the chemical weapons watchdog OPCW. Set up in 1997 to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention, it employs around 500 people and is an autonomous organization with a working relationship with the United Nations. According to a BBC report (Published October 11, 2013) the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was adopted by the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva in September 1992. Under its terms the OPCW stringently verifies whether member nations are complying with the CWC. Part of the OPCW's mission is to prevent the re-emergence of chemical weapons in a country which has signed up. The OPCW says Albania, India and a third country - widely believed to be South Korea - have completed the destruction of their declared chemical weapons. In Libya and Iraq, as well as Syria, Russia and the US, the destruction is ongoing, states the report.

If one views the spirit of Alfred Nobel’s will relating to the Peace Prize, awarding OPCW with the prestigious award makes more sense than many awarded earlier, although even this Peace Prize by many is being viewed as being one indirectly awarded to Assad and Putin. Inspectors were allowed in Syria only after the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and John Kerry the US secretary of state, came to an agreement aimed to circumvent American military intervention. The prize, without question highlights the Syrian crisis, says Aryn Baker the Middle East Bureau Chief for TIME. While announcing the award, the Norwegian Nobel committee criticized US and Russia both committed to destroy their arsenals of chemical weapons under the terms of the CWC, but missed a 2012 deadline to accomplish the objective. According to the Committee, disarmament figures prominently in Alfred Nobel's will.

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has through numerous prizes underlined the need to do away with nuclear weapons. By means of the present award to the OPCW, the Committee is seeking to contribute to the elimination of chemical weapons," the citation said. The Committee however made it clear that the nomination of OPCW was made before April 1 and "came into the picture before the impasse in Syria". (Kounteya Sinha, October 11, 2013 in Times of India)

In Pakistan, there is a feeling of let-down by some for Malala Yusufzai not having won the coveted award after the hype created by certain sections of the media on her “leading the race.” The 16 year old shot in the head by the Taliban spiritedly said, “They only shot a body but they cannot shoot my dreams,” revealing ambitiously that she wanted to become Pakistan’s Prime Minister as news broke that she missed out on the Nobel Peace Prize. Giving credit where credit is due for bravery in her case, the spirit for a Nobel Peace Prize winner as outlined in Alfred Nobel’s will is demanding of different achievements. A friend wrote, “While not taking the credit away from Malala for having the courage to speak up, there's a long way for Malala to go, in order to achieve the status of anyone like Abdul Sattar Eidhi for one or Mother Teresa!” Some feel her cause has been hijacked, “Her intelligence is not the issue; it's the manipulation. Also, people like Edhi, Dr. Adeeb Rizvi (of SIUT) directly touched and changed the lives of hundreds of thousands or millions,” writes another.

I cannot but be reminded here of a very tongue-in-cheek quote by the Canadian-born experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist, and popular science author Steven Pinker, “Some people believe that the nuclear bomb should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, since it scared the major powers away from war by equating it with doomsday.”

 The writer is a lawyer, academic and political analyst. She has authored a book titled A Comparative Analysis of Media & Media Laws in Pakistan.

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/columns/15-Oct-2013/nobel-peace-prize-2013

A Nobel soul

Published: Tuesday October 15, 2013 MYT 12:00:00 AM
Updated: Tuesday October 15, 2013 MYT 7:56:13 AM

by david pratt



Consecrated to work: French scientists Pierre and Marie Curie embodied the cherished ideal of

being utterly immersed in and dedicated to a task of great significance. - File photo

With this year’s Nobel Prizes unveiled last week, here’s a look at some common denominators among laureates.

ARE there any predictors that point to who gets selected for a Nobel Prize? Here’s George Beadle’s (medicine, 1958) response: “Study diligently. Respect DNA. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink. Avoid women and politics. That’s my formula.”

Is precocity in childhood a predictor? When the 2001 economics laureate, George Akerlof, was in second grade, he was asked what he wanted for Christmas, and he said, “A steel mill.”

Asked the same question by his scientist father, Roger Kornberg (chemistry, 2006) said, “A week in the lab.”

But early privilege is not essential. Mario Capecchi (medicine, 2007) was an abandoned child on the streets of wartime Italy. Albert Camus (literature, 1957) grew up fatherless, in poverty in Algiers.

In addition to childhood hardship, many Nobel laureates, men and women, at some point in their lives suffered imprisonment. Nelson Mandela (peace, 1993) set a record with his 27 years in prison in South Africa. Autobiographies show that prison strengthened the convictions of future laureates and toughened their resolution.

Childhood deprivation and adult imprisonment are, however, atypical.

The typical Nobel laureate in science is a male, born in a Western country into a middle-class family.

His father is a professional, manager or professor. His family is Protestant, agnostic or Jewish.
His parents seek out good K-12 schools for him, and he proceeds to a good university.

He receives his doctoral degree before he is 25 and undertakes post-doctoral work under a Nobel-level supervisor. He does his groundbreaking research in his late 30s or early 40s, for which he is awarded the Nobel Prize 15 years later.

Rosalind Yalow (medicine, 1977) told women: “You can have it all!” But only 43 of 862 laureates have been women.

The prizes got their start in 1901, before women won universal suffrage in most nations, let alone an equal share of education. In the sciences, even in contemporary times, the difficulty of combining motherhood with experiments that have to be checked at 3am has channelled many women into teaching universities rather than research institutes.

In their autobiographies, many Nobel laureates pay tribute to an outstanding mentor. Five of Enrico Fermi’s (physics, 1938) post-docs went on to win the Nobel Prize, and 12 of Ernest Rutherford’s (chemistry, 1908).

Otto Warburg (medicine, 1931) advised an American doctoral student, “If you wish to become a scientist, you must ask a successful scientist to accept you in his laboratory, even if at the beginning you would only clean his test tubes.”

Is eccentricity a concomitant of Nobel-level genius? In fact, laureates are mostly down-to-earth and unpretentious. In the United States, 44% of marriages end in divorce. Among Nobel laureates in the 20th century, the rate was 11%.

Much time and energy are saved by a stable family life. Naturally, there are exceptions.

Erwin Schrodinger (physics, 1933) lived for some years in a middle-class Dublin suburb with his wife and his mistress, while simultaneously carrying on affairs with his students and fathering children with two other Irish women.

There remains one quality that is essential. It is what Leon Lederman (physics, 1988) called “compulsive dedication”. What distinguishes Nobel laureates is passion for their work, work that engages their hearts as well as their heads.

Let the example of Marie Curie (physics, 1903; chemistry, 1911) and her husband Pierre (physics, 1903) stand for the experience of many others.

The Curies became convinced that radium could be isolated from the mineral pitchblende The Sorbonne assigned them a shed with a leaking roof and a dirt floor, where the Curies worked for years, freezing in winter and sweltering in summer.

“And yet,” Marie Curie wrote in her biography of her husband, “it was in this miserable old shed that the best and happiest years of our life were spent, entirely consecrated to work.

“I sometimes passed the whole day stirring a mass in ebullition, with an iron rod nearly as big as myself. In the evening, I was broken with fatigue. ... We worked in the unique preoccupation of a dream.”

This experience – being utterly immersed in and dedicated to a task of great significance – is common to all Nobel laureates, and it is cherished by them as much as the prize itself. – Los Angeles Times / McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

David Pratt compiled The Impossible Takes Longer: The 1,000 Wisest Things Ever Said By Nobel Prize Laureates. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Features/2013/10/15/A-Nobel-soul.aspx

Human guinea pigs

Published: Tuesday October 15, 2013 MYT 12:00:00 AM
Updated: Tuesday October 15, 2013 MYT 7:59:33 AM

ALTHOUGH nearly 85% of Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine have relied upon animal research, a few laureates have used themselves as guinea pigs. Below, the organisation Understanding Animal Research details some of these self-experimenters, who each took a risky step for their own reasons – bravery, desperation and hope.


Werner Forssmann (1956)

In the 23 years preceding winning the Nobel Prize, Werner Forssmann had worked as a urologist, served as a Major in the German Army and was captured as a prisoner of war. But none of that concerned the Nobel committee, who were honouring Forssmann for his work as a young surgical intern when he first demonstrated cardiac catheterisation in a human: himself.

Generally thought to be impossible without causing severe damage to the heart, cardiac catheters require inserting a catheter into a vein and threading it through until it reaches the heart.

This would allow clinicians to measure the pressure in the heart and determine if a defect needs to be operated on.

Inspired by researchers who had achieved this in a horse in 1861, Forssmann saw the potential this technique could have.

2005 Nobel Prize laureate Prof Barry Marshall (above) drank a broth of bacteria from the lab to prove that it was a bacterium that caused stomach ulcers while the late Dr Ralph Steinman’s work on dendritic cells helped prolong his life after he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. — File picture

Refused permission to experiment on patients, Forssmann set out to test the technique on himself. First he had to convince the operating room nurse to give him access to surgical instruments.

She relented on the condition that Forssmann would place the catheter in her instead, which he accepted. However, once he had strapped the nurse down onto the operating table,

Forssmann quickly anaesthetised his own arm, made an incision and inserted the catheter 30cm along his veins.

He then walked up two flights of stairs to the X-ray room before extending the catheter the full 60cm to enter his heart and capturing the image.

Forssmann’s reckless bravery generated much annoyance and excitement.

The annoyance eventually won out and Forssmann was forced to withdraw from his residency.

Although he moved out of research, Forssmann’s paper on his work was read many years later by André Frédéric Cournand and Dickinson W. Richards who built on the technique and shared the Nobel Prize with him.

On hearing news of the prize, Forssmann said: “I feel like a village parson who has just learned that he has been made bishop.”


Barry Marshall (2005)

Marshall must be the poster boy for self-experimenters everywhere. He drank a heady broth of bacteria from the lab to prove to his peers that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori was the cause of stomach ulcers.

Stomach ulcers were long thought to be due to stress, with the only treatments being rest, antacids and surgery in extreme cases. But in 1979, pathologist Robin Warren noticed inflammation in regions of stomach biopsies that were colonised by small, curved bacteria.

Marshall, intrigued by his findings, contacted Warren and the pair began a survey of 100 patients and biopsies.

For them, it became clear that the bacteria, which they named H. pylori, were the cause of stomach ulcers and gastritis.



The culprit: The H. pylori bacterium, which Marshall proved caused
stomach ulcers – by testing his theory on himself! — Understanding Animal Research

This discovery was a radical departure from medical opinion at the time, and many researchers and doctors were sceptical. The presence of the bacteria and inflammation did not prove cause and effect.

With no suitable animal model susceptible to the bacteria (this was before the Mongolian gerbil had been found to model the human condition), Marshall decided to demonstrate the role of bacteria using himself as a guinea pig.

Five days after drinking the broth, he began to experience loss of appetite before then vomiting regularly each morning. An endoscopy revealed the truth: Marshall had given himself gastritis. Under orders from his wife, Marshall began taking antibiotics and the symptoms subsided.

This proved that peptic ulcers and gastritis could be cured, saved thousands of lives and rendered the billion-dollar industry of previous treatments obsolete.


Ralph Steinman (2011)

When Steinman was announced as one of the winners of the Nobel Prize in 2011 friends, colleagues and journalists were quick to try to contact him. Outside of his family, no one knew that he had died just three days earlier.

Along with Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann, Steinman was being honoured for his work on the immune system.

He had discovered a new type of cell, which he named dendritic cells because of their tree-like structure, that activate T-cells to fight off an infection.

The immune system is primed to attack foreign and unusual cells in the body, but some cancer cells can slip past its defences.

Being able to control the dendritic cells would allow researchers to train them to target camouflaged cancer cells.

This was a new approach, highly experimental and likely to take decades before it could be available to the public.

So when Steinman was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer in 2007, he saw the opportunity to start a human trial and potentially buy himself more time.

He had little to lose, with less than a 5% chance of surviving a year.

Dozens of his colleagues and collaborators came forward with ideas and techniques for improving his “experiment”.

They worked to grow portions of the tumour in mice, test the effects of different drugs, sequence the cancer’s DNA and extracted proteins from the surface of the cells. In addition, Steinman received three different, personalised vaccines that were based on his work on dendritic cells. Steinman received eight experimental treatments, in addition to conventional chemotherapy.

Despite the range of these treatments, Steinman still succumbed to the cancer, but he had survived four and a half years – far longer than expected.

Although he never learned that he had won the Nobel Prize, he was sure that his work had prolonged his own life and may one day extend many more.

Article courtesy of Understanding Animal Research, a not-for-profit organisation based in Britain that aims to achieve broad understanding and acceptance of the humane use of animals in biomedical research to advance science and medicine. Website: http://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/

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http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Features/2013/10/15/Human-guinea-pigs.aspx

Dr R Steinman - unlocking secrets of the body's immune system

Nobel medicine prize honours work on body's defences

Posted on 3 October 2011 - 09:26pm
Last updated on 4 October 2011 - 07:52am





STOCKHOLM (Oct 3, 2011): Three scientists who unlocked secrets of the body's immune system, opening doors to new vaccines and cancer treatments, won the 2011 Nobel prize for medicine today.

American Bruce Beutler and French biologist Jules Hoffmann, who studied the first stages of immune responses to attack, share the US$1.5 million award with Canadian-born Ralph Steinman, 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 revolutionised 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 Nobel Assembly, told Reuters: "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 will share half the 10 million Swedish crowns (US$1.46 million) of prize-money. The rest goes to Steinman, 68, from Rockefeller University in New York.

However, the prize giving committee and Rockefeller University reported that Steinman died just last Friday at the age of 68, succumbing to his battle with pancreatic cancer.

An official at the Nobel committee of the Karolinska Institute, Anna Dumanski confirmed his death but said she could not give any more details.

The New York based Rockefeller University said in a statement, posted on its website that Steinman, 68, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer four years ago, and his life was extended using a dendritic-cell based immunotherapy of his own design.

The work of the 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.

"We live in a dangerous world. Pathogenic microorganisms threaten us continuously," the Nobel panel said, describing the work over the decades in understanding our defences.

"The first line of defense, innate immunity, can destroy invading microorganisms and trigger inflammation ... If microorganisms break through this defense line, adaptive immunity is called into action ... It produces antibodies and killer cells that destroy infected cells ... These two defense lines ... provide good protection against infections, but they also pose a risk ...: inflammatory disease may follow."

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 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.

Hoffmann's pioneering research was conducted on fruit flies, highlighting how key elements of modern human biology have been conserved through evolution.

The immune system exists primarily to protect against infections but it can also protect against some cancers by targeting rogue cells before they proliferate.

Sometimes, however, the immune system goes into overdrive and attacks healthy tissue, leading to autoimmune inflammatory diseases, such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, as well as rheumatoid arthritis. The effect is often compared to "friendly fire", when troops hit their own comrades in combat. – Reuters

http://www.thesundaily.my/news/164569

Dr R Steinman - Dendritic Cell Noble Peace Prize Winner

One of 3 Chosen for Nobel in Medicine Died Days Ago

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN and NICHOLAS WADE
Published: October 3, 2011

When a representative of the Nobel Foundation could not reach Dr. Ralph M. Steinman by telephone Monday to deliver the thrilling news that he had been awarded a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his breakthrough work in immunology, he sent him an e-mail about the honor.

Stan Honda/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The family of the late Dr. Ralph M.
Steinman, pictured on the screen,
on Monday after he was announced
as a Nobel Prize winner. 

But Dr. Steinman would never see the message nor learn of the prize. He died of pancreatic cancer on Friday, three days before the phone call from the Nobel committee. He had been battling the highly deadly disease for four years, using a treatment he devised to try to prolong his life, essentially turning his body into an extension of his research.

However, Nobel Prizes cannot be awarded posthumously. And so the Nobel committee, which had believed Dr. Steinman to be alive, faced a quandary.
      

Carlos Barria/Reuters
Dr Jules A. Hoffmann, above, and Dr
Bruce A. Beutler, both immunologists,
 shared this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine
with Dr. Ralph M. Steinman, who died of
pancreatic cancer on Friday before
learning of their selection.

On Monday morning, one of Dr. Steinman’s daughters, Alexis, saw the e-mail from the Nobel Foundation and contacted Rockefeller University in New York, where her father had worked. The president of the university, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, immediately called the chairman of the Nobel Prize committee to inform him.

Then the committee, at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, scrambled to figure out what to do. As heartless as it might seem, would the prize for Dr. Steinman have to be revoked?

“This is a unique situation — Steinman died hours before the decision was made,” Goran Hansson, secretary of the Nobel committee for physiology and medicine, told Swedish Radio News after the situation came to light. “News of his death was not  made public. We had no idea, nor did they know at his place of work.”

Mike Groll/Associated Press
Dr. Bruce A. Beutler

The foundation’s nine-member board of directors met Monday afternoon and consulted lawyers concerning the interpretation of the statutes of the Nobel Foundation issued in 1974. The statutes hold that the Nobel Prize is not to be given posthumously. But if a person who is announced as a prize winner dies before receiving it at the Nobel ceremonies on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist who endowed the prizes — the award remains valid.

       

Because Dr. Steinman’s award was made in good faith on the assumption that he was alive at the time of his election, he should receive it, the directors decided.
      

The drama seemed to overshadow the fact that Dr. Steinman was awarded one-half of the prize, and that two other immunologists shared the other half. They were Dr. Bruce A. Beutler of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, and Dr. Jules A. Hoffmann of France. All three scientists were honored for discoveries of essential steps in the immune system’s response to infection.

       

But it was Dr. Steinman who actually used his discoveries in the laboratory to try to save his own life. His career-long quest had been to develop a vaccine against cancer for humans, having shown 20 years ago that such a treatment could be effective in mice.

Four and a half years ago, after he was found to be jaundiced from a spreading pancreatic cancer, he began tailoring an experimental vaccine against his own tumor. The idea was to use the principles learned in the experiments on mice and in the laboratory to produce immune cells derived from his dendritic cells, a class of cells that he discovered in 1973.

After a piece of Dr. Steinman’s cancer was removed, a colleague, Dr. Michel Nussenzweig, grew it in the laboratory to produce enough material to send to at least 20 researchers at Rockefeller University and at least five other laboratories around the world. Dr. Steinman organized the work among the researchers who developed the experimental vaccine.

Dr. Steinman received standard chemotherapy for his cancer as well as the experimental vaccine, which other doctors at Rockefeller University injected under his skin, Dr. Nussenzweig said Monday in a telephone interview. Rockefeller University’s institutional review board approved the experiment.

“Ralph believed strongly that it would work,” Dr. Nussenzweig said. “Obviously, it did not work or he would be here now, but possibly it prolonged his life.” The research, he added, will continue.

Pancreatic cancer is among the most aggressive malignancies, in part because it arises in a gland deep in the abdomen that is hard for doctors to feel with their hands and because usually it produces symptoms only after it has become advanced. About 20 percent of patients with pancreatic cancer survive one year after detection and 4 percent after five years, according to the American Cancer Society.

Dr. Nussenzweig and other doctors said it was impossible to determine whether Dr. Steinman would have survived as long without his self-tailored experimental treatment.

At the time of his death, Dr. Steinman was working to develop a general method for making a vaccine that would not need to be tailored to each patient and that could be used against cancer and certain infections. Other vaccines based on dendritic cells are being tested in patients, researchers said.

Provenge, a vaccine against advanced prostate cancer, was based on Dr. Steinman’s work with dendritic cells. It was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year and is sold by the Dendreon Corporation of Seattle. (Dr. Nussenzweig said that neither he nor Dr. Steinman had any connection to Dendreon, financial or otherwise.)

Scientists who knew Dr. Steinman and his work said the Nobel committee had made the right decision.

       

“All I can say is that the work deserved the prize,” said Susumu Tonegawa of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who himself won the prize in 1987 for his work on immunology.
       

Honored along with Dr. Steinman were Dr. Hoffmann, who was born in Luxembourg, and Dr. Beutler, an American. In 1996, Dr. Hoffmann discovered the cell receptors in laboratory fruit flies that are activated by pathogenic bacteria or fungi. Two years later, Dr. Beutler identified the cell receptors in mice that respond to a substance in the coat of bacteria and that can set off septic shock if overstimulated. These receptors turned to be made by the same family of genes as those in the fruit fly, known as Toll-like receptor genes.

Mr. Hansson of the Nobel committee said Nobel Prizes had been awarded posthumously twice before: in 1931, for literature, to the poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt, and, 30 years later, to Dag Hammarskjold, for peace.

“The situation was a little different then because the committee was aware that the recipients were dead,” Mr. Hansson told Swedish radio. “The practice now is not to award the prize to someone who is deceased.”

The Nobel committee was not able to make contact with any of the three winners before the announcement was made, Mr. Hansson said, adding that the committee normally makes personal contact with the winners before going public with the news.

Annika Pontikis, a spokeswoman for the Nobel Foundation, said she did not know whether the board had discussed how to check whether future recipients were alive at the time of their election.

Christina Anderson contributed reporting from Stockholm, and Maria V. Elkin from Washington.

 A version of this article appeared in print on October 4, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Death Doesn’t Rob Recipient Of Nobel Prize.

The above is taken from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/science/04nobel.html?_r=1&ref=science

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The excerpt below is taken from:
http://www.rockefeller.edu/research/faculty/labheads/RalphSteinman/




Heads of Laboratories
Ralph M. Steinman, M.D.
Senior Physician
Henry G. Kunkel Professor
Laboratory of Cellular Physiology and Immunology
Ralph.Steinman@rockefeller.edu


Dendritic cells, which were originally codiscovered by Dr. Steinman with Zanvil A. Cohn at Rockefeller, are pivotal to the adaptive and innate branches of the immune system. Dr. Steinman’s research focused on the mechanisms employed by dendritic cells to regulate lymphocyte function in tolerance and immunity, as well as the use of dendritic cells to understand the development of immune-based diseases and the design of new therapies and vaccines.

The immune system contains a system of dendritic cells, which captures, processes and presents antigens and provides additional controls on the development of antigen-specific immunity and tolerance. Because of these functions, dendritic cells (DCs) are providing an important means to monitor and manipulate immune function in several disease states.

Dr. Steinman was the recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine in 2010, the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research in 2009 and the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 2007. He received the Debrecen Prize in Molecular Medicine in 2006, the New York City Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Science and Technology in 2004, the Novartis Prize in Immunology in 2004 and the Gairdner Foundation International Award in 2003. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.

For more, see  http://www.rockefeller.edu/research/faculty/labheads/RalphSteinman/