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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 ($1 million).
"Allison and Honjo showed how different strategies for inhibiting
the brakes on the immune system can be used in the treatment of
cancer," it said.
The treatments, often referred to as "immune checkpoint therapy",
have "fundamentally changed the outcome for certain groups of
patients with advanced cancer", it added.
Medicine is the first of the Nobel Prizes awarded each year. The
prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were
created in accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and
businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901.
The literature prize will not be handed out this year after the
awarding body was hit by a sexual misconduct scandal.
Allison and Honjo's work had both worked on proteins that act as
brakes on the immune system - preventing the body and its main
immune cells, known as T-cells, from attacking tumor cells
effectively.
Allison, professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer
Center in the United States, worked on a protein known as CTLA-4 and
realized during his work that if this could be blocked, a brake
would be released, unleashing immune cells to attack tumors.
Honjo, 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. In particular, drugs targeting PD-1
blockade have proved a big commercial hit, offering new options for
patients with melanoma, lung and bladder cancers.
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U.S. drugmakers Merck & Co <MRK.N> and Bristol-Myers Squibb <BMY.N>
currently lead the field after winning drug approvals in 2014, but
Roche <ROG.S>, AstraZeneca <AZN.L>, Pfizer <PFE.N> and Sanofi <SASY.PA>
are also fielding rivals. Sales of such medicines, which are given
as infusions, are expected to reach some $15 billion this year,
according to Thomson Reuters' consensus forecasts, and some analysts
see eventual revenues of $50 billion.
Thomas Perlmann, Secretary of the Nobel Committee of the Karolinska
Institute told the news conference that he talked to Honjo over the
phone just before the announcement.
"Honjo sounded extremely pleased," Perlmann said. "He seemed rather
surprised and expressed very clearly how pleased he was with the
prize and also ...with sharing the prize with Allison."
Perlmann said he had not yet managed to contact Allison.
Commenting on Monday's award, Dan Davis, an immunologist at
Britain's University of Manchester, said "this game-changing cancer
therapy" has "sparked a revolution in thinking about the many other
ways in which the immune system can be harnessed or unleashed to
fight cancer and other illnesses."
"I think this is just the tip of the iceberg - many more medicines
like this are on the horizon," he said.
(Reporting by Simon Johnson and Niklas Pollard, additional reporting
by Daniel Dickson, Esha Vaish, Anna Ringstrom and Ben Hirschler.
Editing by xxxx)
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