Immunoligist dies 3 days before being awarded Nobel Prize

This is sorta amazing. This researcher died almost literally while the Nobel committee was voting on the prize he would eventually win. The rules say that the award cannot be given posthumously, but they're giving it to him anyway since the voting committee was unaware of his passing.

Ralph Steinman, the Montreal-born immunologist who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine along with two other scientists on Monday, died on Friday of pancreatic cancer – never having learned that he would be awarded science’s top honour. He was 68.

 

Steinman earned half the Nobel Prize for his 1973 discovery of what he called the dendritic cell – a finding that scientists say has greatly enhanced our understanding of how the body’s adaptive immune system works, and that has paved the way for treatments for cancer and other diseases.

 

In fact, Steinman probably prolonged his own life with a therapy that was based on his original research, his sister-in-law told The Gazette. Steinman had been battling pancreatic cancer for the past 4½ years, and had been doing well until his health deteriorated suddenly in the past few weeks, Linda Steinman noted.

 

“He was using his own immune therapy on his illness,” she said.

 

“I can’t tell you how he was doing it. It’s much too complex, I imagine. He worked with colleagues at Harvard (University) and Johns Hopkins (in Baltimore) on this type of therapy. We firmly believe that the therapy that he developed helped him – that it extended his life, since pancreatic cancer is such a lethal form.”

 

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Nobe...l#ixzz1Zoj4P9yj