2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo. The prize was announced by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm on 1 October 2018.

The citation

The citation reads: "for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

James P. Allison was born in 1948 in Alice, the United States, and is affiliated with Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, San Francisco and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. Tasuku Honjo was born in 1942 in Kyoto, Japan, and is affiliated with Kyoto University, Kyoto.

Why it matters

Allison and Honjo showed how releasing the brakes on the immune system can help it attack cancer, leading to a new class of cancer drugs known as immune checkpoint inhibitors.

The prize

The prize is worth 9 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.