Announcement of 2011 Nobels in Medicine
(from Reuters) “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. The award went to three biologists for the discovery of pattern receptors, called TOLL, that detect foreign matter and of dendritic cells that use this information to prime immune responses.
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, unfortunately he died on Sept. 30.
Beutler and Hoffmann discovered in the 1990s that receptor proteins act as a first line of defense, innate immunity, by recognizing 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.
Sadly died just before the announcement on Friday after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer. His colleagues at Rockefeller University in New York called it a “bittersweet” honor. Swedish officials on the Nobel Committee were rushing to try to clarify what secretary general Goran Hansson, called a “unique situation, because he died hours before the decision was made.” Hansson told Swedish news agency TT the panel would review what to do with the prize money, due to rules against posthumous awards. But it would not name a substitute winner.
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 honored.”
A personal note: Goran Hansson, the Secretary General of the Nobel Committee, seated in the bottom middle of the photograph, is a former fellow of mine, a greatly admired colleague and a dear friend. Goran’s own work has been on the roll of the immune system in the etiology of vascular diseases, especially atherosclerosis. There is a substantial body of evidence that progression of the plaque to a form that kills people depends on innate immunity.