Honjo wins Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Tasuku Honjo, professor at Japan's Kyoto University, will be awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with U.S. immunologist James Allison for their establishment of entirely new methods to fight cancer utilizing the immune system, Sweden's Karolinska Institute said Monday.

Honjo, 76, is the first Japanese Nobel winner since 2016, when Yoshinori Ohsumi, honorary professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, won the same prize, and the fifth laureate in physiology or medicine.

"I'm surprised," Honjo told a press conference held at his university. "I think I'm really a lucky person."

Although surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy with anticancer drugs are major methods to treat cancer patients, immune therapies developed by Honjo and Allison, 70, have drawn attention in recent years.

"By stimulating the inherent ability of our immune system to attack tumor cells this year's Nobel Laureates have established an entirely new principle for cancer therapy," the Nobel Assembly at the leading Swedish medical institute said in a statement.

(jiji.com)