This year’s Nobel Prize winners will be revealed throughout the first two weeks of October. You’ll find the details here as they are announced, along with links to Quartz’s coverage of the people and ideas behind the awards. 💊 Monday, Oct. 1: The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to James Allison and Tasuku Honjo “for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.” Read Quartz’s story on the science behind the work. 🌀 Tuesday, Oct. 2: The 2018 Nobel Prize in physics went to Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou, and Donna Strickland “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics.” Read Quartz’s story on the science behind the work. (Wikipedia rejected a submission for a page on Strickland in May because there wasn’t “significant coverage” about her.) 🔬 Wednesday, Oct. 3: The Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to Frances Arnold “for the directed evolution of enzymes” and Greg Winter and George P. Smith “for the phage display of peptides and antibodies.” Read Quartz’s story on the science behind the work. 🕊 Friday, Oct. 5: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad, a Yazidi human rights activist from Iraq, for their work to end sexual violence as a weapon of war. Read Quartz’s story on their work. 💰 Monday, Oct. 8: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel went to William Nordhaus and Paul Romer for “addressing some of our time’s most basic and pressing questions about how we create long-term sustained and sustainable economic growth.” Read Quartz’s story on the economists’ award-winning work. 📚 Please note: This year’s Nobel Prize in literature has been postponed, following a sexual-harassment allegation. Related stories<doc-sep>The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded on Monday to James P. Allison of the United States and Tasuku Honjo of Japan for their work on unleashing the body’s immune system to attack cancer, a breakthrough that has led to an entirely new class of drugs and brought lasting remissions to many patients who had run out of options. Their success, which came after many researchers had given up on the idea, “brought immunotherapy out from decades of skepticism,” said Dr. Jedd Wolchok, a cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. It has, he said, “led to human applications that have affected an untold number of people’s health.” Before Dr. Allison’s and Dr. Honjo’s discoveries, cancer treatment consisted of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and hormonal treatments. A statement from the Nobel committee hailed their accomplishments as establishing “an entirely new principle for cancer therapy.” The drugs based on their work belong to a class called checkpoint inhibitors, with tongue-twisting names that have nonetheless become familiar to many patients. The first ones approved were ipilimumab (brand name Yervoy), nivolumab (Opdivo) and pembrolizumab (Keytruda). Others have since come to market.<doc-sep>The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics on October 2, 2018, was awarded to Arthur Ashkin of the US, Gerard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada. (Image: Twitter/NobelPrize) The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics on October 2, 2018, was awarded to Arthur Ashkin of the US, Gerard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada, making her the third woman to receive the prestigious award. The trio of laureates won the prize for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics. Discoveries by the scientists which led them to win the Nobel Prize 1. Arthur Ashkin received the prize for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems. Arthur Ashkin, awarded the 2018 #NobelPrize in Physics, was born in 1922 in New York, USA. He received his Ph.D. in 1952 from Cornell University, Ithaca, USA.https://t.co/pbNjp0KJJA pic.twitter.com/lRBNdl6wJv The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 2, 2018 Ashkin's optical tweezers are able to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells with their laser beam fingers, allowing the American researcher to realise 'an old dream of science fiction - using the radiation pressure of light to move physical objects' Science fiction has become a reality. Optical tweezers make it possible to observe, turn, cut, push and pull with light. In many laboratories, laser tweezers are used to study biological processes, such as proteins, molecular motors, DNA or the inner life of cells.#NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/tWK55J4VcP October 2, 2018 The tweezers can capture living bacteria without harming them, a breakthrough he achieved back in 1987. Since then, these instruments have been widely used 'to investigate the machinery of life', the Academy explained. 2. Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland were jointly awarded for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement. #NobelPrize laureate Gérard Mourou was born in 1944 in Albertville, France. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan @UMich and the École Polytechnique in Palaiseau France @Polytechnique https://t.co/EBwNBPvKFn pic.twitter.com/UVc5esdaeG The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 2, 2018 They created ultrashort high-intensity laser pulses without destroying the amplifying material, thus paving the way towards the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created by mankind With ultrashort and intense laser pulses, we can see events that previously seemed instantaneous. Laser pulses shorter than 100 attoseconds (one attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second) reveal the dramatic world of electrons. Read more: https://t.co/e7N1QpQ2Yj pic.twitter.com/VACJgG7c1M The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 2, 2018 Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland this year’s #NobelPrize recipients paved the way towards the shortest and most intense laser pulses created by humankind. The technique they developed opened up new areas of research and led to broad industrial and medical applications. pic.twitter.com/KQYcbmW0tl October 2, 2018 Their innovative technique, known as 'chirped pulse amplification' (CPA), has now become standard for high-intensity lasers, including the ultra-sharp beams used in corrective eye surgeries. Donna Strickland - Third woman to receive the Nobel Prize Donna Strickland, this year's #NobelPrize laureate, was born in 1959 in Guelph, Canada. She is Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada @UWaterloo https://t.co/Hc4lyWhZTG pic.twitter.com/vGEpjnmfCL The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 2, 2018 Strickland became the first woman to receive the award in 55 years after Marie Curie won it in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963. First of all, you have to think it is crazy! - Donna Strickland, our new Physics Laureate, on receiving that magic #NobelPrize call today. The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 2, 2018 Speaking about being the third woman to ever win the award, she said, "We need to celebrate women physicists because we're out there. I'm honoured to be one of those women." Strickland was born near Toronto, Canada in 1959, obtained her PhD at the University of Rochester with Mourou as her advisor, jointly developing the 'chirped pulse amplification' technique. The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden with a prize of one million USD. Read about the winners of 2017| Nobel Prize in Physics bagged by American scientists for discovering gravitational wave The wide gender disparity gap - Some alarming stats Since the first prizes were awarded in 1901, 892 individuals have received one, but just 48 of them have been women 30 of those women either won the literature or peace prize , highlighting the wide gender gap in the laureates for physics, chemistry and physiology/medicine of those women either won the , highlighting the wide gender gap in the laureates for physics, chemistry and physiology/medicine Only one woman has won the economics prize , which is not a Nobel but is associated with the prizes , which is not a Nobel but is associated with the prizes In his 1895 will, prize founder Alfred Nobel wrote: "It is my express wish that in the awarding of the prizes no consideration shall be given to national affiliations of any kind so that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not." Even then, the prizes have remained white and male for most of their existence READ| 10 women who won the Nobel Prize and shattered the glass ceiling Trivia John Bardeen, the only person to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics twice. (Image: Twitter/NobelPrize) The only person who has received the Nobel Prize in Physics twice is John Bardeen, in 1956 and 1972. READ| Only 6 per cent of Nobel Prize winners are female: 11 women who should have won the Nobel but didn't Interested in General Knowledge and Current Affairs? Click here to stay informed and know what is happening around the world with our G.K. and Current Affairs section. To get more updates on Current Affairs, send in your query by mail to education.intoday@gmail.com<doc-sep>There are moments in the history of scientific achievement that benchmark the end of an era and the beginning of a new phase of reality for mankind. The significance of these inflection points is sometimes readily apparent. NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong’s first step onto the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, marked a new phase of space exploration. Other advances take many years for the historical significance to manifest, with an impact that appreciates over decades. That was the case with the development of the mechanized clock of the 15th century and the invention of the telephone in 1876. Attempts to rid people of their cancer burden date back to 1600 B.C. when the disease was first recognized. But the idea of using a patient’s own immune system to eliminate aggressive cancers is more recent. Nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich first postulated that the immune system might control tumors more than 120 years ago. Since then, researchers have tried to boost the immune system to wipe out cancers. This week, the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for discoveries that have led to new medicines that activate the immune system and drive it to fight cancers. These therapies can defeat even the deadliest malignancies. Allison and Honjo have revolutionized our understanding of how the immune system recognizes tumor cells and have created a paradigm shift in clinical oncology that will likely alter how we treat cancer for the foreseeable future. Standard weapons for fighting cancer To date, our best tools for treating aggressive cancers that have spread beyond the range of curative surgery have been radiation therapy and systemic chemotherapy agents. For the most part these treatments kill rapidly dividing tumor cells by damaging their DNA or disrupting other essential cellular processes. This has led to most of the significant treatment advances we have achieved in terms of long-term survival in patients with advanced cancers. I believe that soon cancer immunotherapy will equal, or rival, the impact of radiation and chemotherapy for patients diagnosed with cancer. To understand the significance of Allison and Honjo’s discoveries, one must appreciate researchers have been trying to rally a powerful immune response against tumor cells for the past century. Prior to Allison and Honjo’s work, researchers believed that aggressive cancers grew unchecked because the immune response was too weak. The consensus was that if one could stimulate the immune system, it would respond and destroy the invasive tumor cells. Immune checkpoints Allison and Honjo, however, made a critical leap when they characterized two very important and potent pathways – called “immune checkpoints” – that can shut down the immune response. These pathways inhibit T cells – white blood cells that are charged with destroying virus-infected cells and tumor cells – and prevent them from “seeing” and attacking the tumor. Allison and Honjo identified and characterized two different proteins, called CTLA-4 and PD-1, respectively, that sit on the surface of T-cells. When these proteins interact with matching proteins on tumor cells or other immune cells – the way a key fits a lock – the T-cells fall into “sleep mode” and don’t attack the tumor. In many patients with cancer, these CTLA-4 and PD-1 pathways shut down anti-tumor immune activity. Without immune surveillance, the tumors grow and spread. This meant that our early attempts to activate the immune system were like trying to drive a car with the brake pedal pressed to the floor. No matter how we tried, or stepped on the gas, the brakes thwarted any progress. But Allison and Honjo’s research led to the development of a new type of drug: monoclonal antibodies that block the regulatory pathways controlled by CTLA-4 and PD-1. These drugs, called immune checkpoint inhibitors, basically attach to the CTLA-4 and PD-1 proteins and prevent them from switching off the T-cells. These new antibody-drugs have led to dramatic tumor regressions. The results are so impressive that the FDA has approved their use for a variety of advanced cancers such as: metastatic melanoma, lung cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, head and neck cancers, and other tumors. Lan Hoang-Minh, Ph.D., University of Florida Brain Tumor Immunotherapy Program , CC BY-SA A new arsenal of checkpoint inhibitor drugs The excitement surrounding cancer immunotherapy is due, in no small part, to the fact that these new medicines are revolutionizing how we treat advanced malignancies in which chemotherapy, surgery and radiation have failed. Furthermore, cancer immunotherapy has already become the preferred first option treatment for some cases of metastastic melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. It is currently being evaluated as the first line option over traditional chemotherapy in other cancers. CTLA-4 and PD-1 represent only the first two well-characterized immune checkpoints among an expanding list of targets that have been identified on immune cells and are believed important for modulating T-cell tumor fighting. There are more than a dozen immune checkpoint inhibitors that have already entered clinical development and there are endless possibilities for combining these new inhibitors with those that have already been shown to improve clinical responses in treated patients. The risks of unleashing the immune system Although immune therapy is a breakthrough, it is not without risks to the patient. Taking the brakes off of the immune system can trigger undesirable and in some cases deadly consequences for patients treated with drugs. The killing power of the immune system is tightly regulated to protect normal cells from attacks that can damage critical tissues. Removing the brakes with immune checkpoint inhibitors can cause damaging inflammation in the skin, gut, heart, lungs and other vital organs. These risks can add up when these potent inhibitors are combined. And, the long-term side effects of immune checkpoint inhibition are not fully understood. While the clinical responses to these treatments can be dramatic, long-term tumor regressions are achieved only in a minority (usually less than 20 to 30 percent depending on the tumor type) of treated patients. Also, the use of the PD-1 and CTLA-4 checkpoint inhibitors has not proven effective against all tumor types.<doc-sep>
FILE- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Physics, and Chemistry are conferred upon people who have excelled in the field of science. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, FILE) FILE- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Physics, and Chemistry are conferred upon people who have excelled in the field of science. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, FILE) The 2018 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Arthur Ashkin as well as jointly to Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland Tuesday for their groundbreaking discoveries in ‘laser physics’. Strickland became the third female Nobel laureate in physics. Ultra-sharp laser beams make it possible to cut or drill holes in various materials extremely precisely – even in living matter. Millions of eye operations are performed every year with the sharpest of laser beams.#NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/MiYb4i8AHw — The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 2, 2018 Nobel Prize considered a pride to regard people who have made great advances and discoveries in different fields. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Physics, and Chemistry are conferred upon people who have excelled in the field of science. Watch the video here. The winners will be awarded with nine million kronor (£770,000) which has been decided by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Among this year’s top contenders were scientists who worked on a technology which showcased the development of solar cells based on a class of mineral called perovskites, devices whose performance is on par with that of silicon solar cells, and which are less costly and energy-intensive to produce. From this ordinary phone, someone will receive an extraordinary phone call #NobelPrize #Physics pic.twitter.com/EpDoSdobIy — Vetenskapsakademien (@vetenskapsakad) October 2, 2018 Another discovery touted to be a winner are scientists who have worked on quantum entanglement – which means that even when two particles are separated by vast expanses, they are still “in touch” with each other so by measuring the properties of one, the properties of the other are also known. This phenomenon was famously described by Einstein as “spooky action at a distance”. The last Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to a woman was nearly 55 years ago, which was in 1963 to Maria Goeppert Mayer who was accorded a share of the prize for her discoveries around how protons and neutrons are arranged in the nucleus of atoms. Marie Curie remains the only other woman to have achieved the title back in 1903, and was one among the four winners that year. Last year’s prize was awarded to the trio of Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne for their work which led to the detection of gravitational waves: ripples in the fabric of spacetime, produced during violent events, such as the merger of black holes.