born scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for his discoveries about the immune system but hours later his university said that he had been dead for three days. The Nobel committee had been unaware of Ralph Steinman's death and it was unclear whether the prize would be rescinded because Nobel statutes don't allow posthumous awards,but the jury will stand by its decision. Steinman, 68, who shared the prize with American Bruce Beutler and French scientist Jules Hoffmann, died on Sept. 30 of pancreatic cancer, acccording to Rockefeller University, which said he had been treated with immunotherapy based on his discovery of dendritic cells two decades earlier. The cells help regulate adaptive immunity, an immune system response that purges invading microorganisms from the body. Nobel committee member Goran Hansson said the Nobel committee didn't know Steinman was dead when it chose him as a winner and was looking through its regulations. It is incredibly sad news,” Hansson said. “We can only regret that he didn't have the chance to receive the news he had won the Nobel Prize. Our thoughts are now with his family.” Beutler, 53, is based at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Luxembourg-born Hoffmann, 70, conducted much of his work in Strasbourg. They will share half the 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.46 million) of prize-money. The rest was intended to go to Steinman, 68, from Rockefeller University in New York. An earlier statement from the award panel at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said, “this year's Nobel laureates have revolutionized our understanding of the immune system by discovering key principles for its activation,” the award panel at said in a statement in Stockholm. The trio's discoveries have enabled the development of improved vaccines against infectious diseases. In the long term they could also yield better treatments of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and chronic inflammatory diseases, hansson said. Beutler and Hoffmann were cited for their discoveries in the 1990s of receptor proteins that can recognize bacteria and other microorganisms as they enter the body, and activate the first line of defense in the immune system, known as innate immunity. The work of the three scientists has been pivotal to the development of improved types of vaccines against infectious diseases and novel approaches to fighting cancer. The research has helped lay the foundations for a new wave of “therapeutic vaccines” that stimulate the immune system to attack tumors. “They have made possible the development of new methods for preventing and treating disease, for instance with improved vaccines against infections and in attempts to stimulate the immune system to attack tumors,” the committee said. Better understanding of the complexities of the immune system has also given clues for treating inflammatory diseases. Understanding dendritic cells led to the launch of the first therapeutic cancer vaccine last year, Dendreon's Provenge, which treats men with advanced prostate cancer. Medicine, or physiology, is usually the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year. Prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901 accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel. The award citation noted that the world's scientists had long been searching for the “gatekeepers” of immune response.
