Trio awarded Nobel Prize for medicine

Award for their work on body's complex defense system, however one member died a week before the award.

WASHINGTON: Three scientists were awarded Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday the for their work on the body's complex defense system in which signaling molecules unleash antibodies and killer cells to respond to invading microbes.

However, Canadian cell biologist Ralph Steinman, 68, who was a co-awardee, for his pioneering work on the immune system, died of pancreatic cancer last week, his employer said.

"Steinman passed away on September 30," Rockefeller University said in a statement. "He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer four years ago, and his life was extended using a dendritic-cell based immunotherapy of his own design."

Steinman shared the award with Bruce Beutler of the United States and Luxembourg-born Jules Hoffmann, who is a naturalized French citizen.

The trio were lauded for their work on the body's complex defense system in which signaling molecules unleash antibodies and killer cells to respond to invading microbes.

Nobel prize regulations do not allow the award to be given posthumously, but the head of the committee Goeran Hansson said the group stood by its choice.

Hansson, the head of the Nobel assembly at Karolinska Institutet, said the committee had just found out about his passing.

"We just got the information. What we can do now is only to regret that he could not experience the joy," Hansson told Swedish news agency TT.

The committee's rules state that a person may be awarded the honor even if he or she dies before receiving it.

"Work produced by a person since deceased shall not be considered for an award. If, however, a prizewinner dies before he has received the prize, then the prize may be presented," said the committee's rules.

Rockefeller University, where Steinman began work in 1970 as a postdoctoral fellow and was named director of the Christopher Browne Center for Immunology and Immune Diseases in 1998, said staff learned of his death on Monday.

"The Rockefeller University is delighted that the Nobel Foundation has recognized Ralph Steinman for his seminal discoveries concerning the body's immune responses," said university president Marc Tessier-Lavigne.

"But the news is bittersweet, as we also learned this morning from Ralph's family that he passed a few days ago after a long battle with cancer. Our thoughts are with Ralph's wife, children and family."

Steinman was born in Montreal, Canada on January 14, 1943, and earned his medical degree from Harvard University in 1968.

Steinman discovered in 1973 a new cell type that he called the dendritic cell, according to the Nobel committee.

"He speculated that it could be important in the immune system and went on to test whether dendritic cells could activate T cells, a cell type that has a key role in adaptive immunity," it said.

"These findings were initially met with skepticism but subsequent work by Steinman demonstrated that dendritic cells have a unique capacity to activate T cells."