Dr. Honjo in Kyoto University got a Novel Prize (in Physiology or Medicine) together with Dr. James Alison of MD Anderson. Congratulations!! As for the Novel Prize in Chemistry, Dr. Winter and his collaborators have received the award for the development of the phage display of peptides and antibodies. Without the efficient development of humanized monoclonal antibodies, there is no cancer treatment such as anti-CTLA4 or anti-PD1, so it was such a great combination of the awardees. Dr. Sally Ward, who is one of our lecturer in our immunology class, was once in Dr. Winter's lab, so she attended the award ceremony. Hope this may inspire to many Hokudai students!
As for my personal note, I wished Dr. Honjo receive the Novel Prize about the mechanism of the anti-class switching, instead of anti-PD1. Is it only me, that I think this discovery is the most foremost discovery in this field?! Without the class switching, we couldn't create high specificity antigens that we use for to make drugs, treatment or even vaccines.
I heard Dr. Honjo plans to use his award funding toward young researchers. Such a high respect for him as he explains the importance of basic medicine... A lot of remarkable Japanese researchers have been awarded a Novel Prize in recent years, but all those research had been done 10 or 15 years ago. However, the fundings and the number of published papers that underlies the research has been quite decreasing in Japan. To maintain the national strength, which in the country that has limited natural resources, it it necessary to have science technology and the higher education system that supports the technology. However to this day, we are in no position to give out the fundings for science as we have lots of other concerns such as super-aged society and economic contraction. Ideally, I think its better to change the government policy drastically, but again, those changes may be blocked by the vested interest groups. At least for now, I think we (researchers) are responsible to pass on the basic science research onto the next generation.
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