Good Morning:
This is Christina Carmichael. Thank you for joining PulseAid's Innovative Healthcare show broadcasted on PersonalziedmedicineTV.com
Today is October 12th, 2011, and in today's show we will discuss the recent news about a Nobel prize winner who was awarded the coveted prize just after he died and how he fought his cancer with his own research until his death
Dr. Ralph Steinman of the Rockefeller University received the Nobel prize on October 3rd 2011. Unfortunately, the good news was clouded by the fact that Dr. Steiman had died. Noble prize winners always make big news. But in this case the news became bigger because the recipient of the Nobel prize was dead. According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, work produced by a person since deceased shall not be given an award.
On October 3rd, 2011 the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet announced that their decision to award the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to the late Ralph Steinman shall remain unchanged, in keeping with their earlier announcement.
As announced by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet earlier, Ralph Steinman -- one of 2011 three Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine -- died on September 30. This information reached the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet via the president of Rockefeller University, where Steinman worked, on October 3, 2011. Earlier the same day, the Nobel Assembly had announced the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine without knowing of Ralph Steinman's death.
The Nobel Assembly said that "The events that have occurred are unique and, to the best of our knowledge, are unprecedented in the history of the Nobel Prize. In light of this, the Board of the Nobel Foundation has held a meeting this afternoon. According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, work produced by a person since deceased shall not be given an award. However, the statutes specify that if a person has been awarded a prize and has died before receiving it, the prize may be presented."
The foundation pointed out that the decision to award the Nobel Prize to Ralph Steinman was made in good faith, based on the assumption that the Nobel Laureate was alive. This was true -- though not at the time of the decision -- only a day or so previously.
According to Reuters, In the last few years of his life, Dr. Ralph Steinman made himself into an extraordinary human lab experiment, testing a series of unproven therapies - including some he helped to create - as he waged a very personal battle with pancreatic cancer.
The winner of the 2011 Nobel prize in medicine, who died only three days before the award was announced on Monday, ultimately tried as many as eight unproven treatments.
"He felt that human clinical investigation was the highest form of research, that it was critical to engage in it," Dr. Sarah Schlesinger, Steinman's clinical lab director and colleague at New York's Rockefeller University, told Reuters. "He had great criticism of how slowly the process moved ... he was impatient with data and mice," she added.
Friends and colleagues said Steinman was devoted to research that would make a difference in the lives of people.
That became more apparent after his own cancer diagnosis, recalls Dr. Louis Weiner, director of Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C., who worked with Steinman on a cancer immunology panel through the American Association of Cancer Research.
"Because he was looking down the barrel of his own gun in a sense, he shared the cancer patient's sense of urgency that we identify new and effective treatments," Weiner said.
"He didn't want to be held hostage to failed concepts, to petty obstacles that interfere with the development of effective therapies. He wanted to see effective treatments made available to people so that they could be helped."
Steinman spent his entire career on immunology research for which he won the Nobel Prize, an honor he shares with American Bruce Beutler and French biologist Jules Hoffmann for their contributions to explaining the immune system.
Steinman's discovery of dendritic cells in 1973 led to the first therapeutic cancer vaccine, Dendreon's Provenge, which treats men with advanced prostate cancer.
When Steinman was diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer four-and-a-half years ago, the cancer had already begun to spread to his lymph nodes.
"He elected to receive all of the conventional therapy that was available. He had surgery and conventional chemotherapy as well, but he was quite certain that was unlikely to cure him or even allow him very much time," Schlesinger said.
"The one-year survival for what he had was less than 5 percent."
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