Landmark cancer therapy wins Nobel prize

Two scientists who exposed how to fight cancer using the body's protected system have won the 2018 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine.

The work by James P Allison, from the US, and Tasuku Honjo, from Japan, has led to treatment for higher, lethal skin cancer.

resistant checkpoint therapy has revolutionised cancer action, said the prize-giving Swedish Academy.

expert say it has prove to be "obviously effective".
Allison, a professor at the University of Texas, and Honjo, a professor at Kyoto University, will split the Nobel prize sum of nine million Swedish kronor - about $1.01 million or 870,000 euros.
Treating the untreatable


Our resistant system protects us from virus, but it has built in safeguards or to stop it from attacking our own tissue.

Some cancers can take benefit of those "brakes" and the move attack too.
Allison and Honjo exposed a way to unleash our resistant cells to attack tumours by turning off proteins that put the brakes on.


And that has led to the increase of new drugs that offer hope to patients with advanced and previously untreatable cancer.

Immune checkpoint therapy is being used by the NHS to treat people with the most serious form of skin cancer, melanoma.

It doesn't work for everyone, but for some patients it appear to have worked incredibly well, getting rid of the tumour entirely, even after it had in progress to spread around the body.

Doctors have also been using the action help some people with lung cancer.
drug is the first of the Nobel Prizes awarded each year.


The writing prize will not be handed out this year after the awarding body was exaggerated by a sexual bad behavior scandal.