TWO scientists, James Allison at the University of Texas and Tasuku Honjo at Kyoto University in Japan, who pioneered an entirely new way to treat cancer have won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Their work led to a fourth class of treatment – alongside surgery, chemotherapy and radiation – that harnesses the immune system. “For more than 100 years, scientists attempted to engage the immune system in the fight against cancer. Until the seminal discoveries by the two laureates, progress into clinical development was modest,” the Nobel jury noted.
The two scientists showed how proteins on immune cells can be used to manipulate the immune system so that it attacks cancer cells. The approach has since led to the development of therapies that have been hailed for extending survival in some people with cancer by years, and even wiped out all signs of the disease in some people with advanced cancers. Working independently of Allison, in 1992 Honjo discovered a different T-cell protein, PD-1, which also acts as a brake on the immune system but by a different mechanism. PD-1 went on to become a target in the treatment of cancer. In 2012, research in people revealed that the protein was effective against several different cancers, including lung cancer. In 2014 a drug based on a new approach to cancer treatment came out in Japan. Hopes are high for nivolumab, sold by Ono Pharmaceutical under the trade name Opdivo as breakthrough in cancer immunotherapy. Its development was spearheaded by Honjo.
The US Magazine Science named cancer immunotherapy using antibodies in the 2013 “Breakthrough of the Year”. Nivolumab was approved for the treatment of melanoma first in Japan in July 2014 and then in the United States in December of that year. In addition, the drug received approval in the United States in March 2015 for use on lung cancer.
