Japanese scientist wins Nobel medicine
prize for work on 'self-eating' cells
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[October 03, 2016]
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Japan's
Yoshinori Ohsumi won the 2016 Nobel prize for medicine or physiology for
his discovery of how cells break down and recycle their content, which
could lead to a better understanding of diseases like cancer,
Parkinson's and type 2 diabetes.
"Ohsumi's discoveries led to a new paradigm in our understanding of how
the cell recycles its content," the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's
Karolinska Institute said in a statement on awarding the prize of 8
million Swedish crowns ($933,000).
"His discoveries opened the path to understanding ... many physiological
processes, such as in the adaptation to starvation or response to
infection," the statement added.
Ohsumi's work on cell breakdown, a field known as autophagy, is
important because it can help explain what goes wrong in a range of
diseases.
"Mutations in autophagy ('self eating') genes can cause disease, and the
autophagic process is involved in several conditions including cancer
and neurological disease," the statement said.
Ohsumi, born in 1945 in Fukuoka, Japan, has been a professor at the
Tokyo Institute of Technology since 2009.
"I am extremely honored," he told Kyodo News agency.
The prize for Physiology or Medicine is 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.
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Yoshinori Ohsumi, a professor in Tokyo Institute of Technology is
seen at his laboratory office in Yokohama, Japan, June 7, 2013 in
this handout released by Tokyo Institute of Technology. Tokyo
Institute of Technology/Handout via REUTERS
This year, the Karolinska Institute, the institution that awards the
medicine prize, has been immersed in a scandal over the hiring of a
controversial surgeon. The Swedish government dismissed several members
of the board in September.
(Reporting by Stockholm Newsroom; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Mark
Trevelyan)
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