Breast cancer treatment? Messenger RNA vaccines? Progress in disease detection? The Nobel Prize in Medicine opens the season of famous charity awards on Monday under the dark specter of the ongoing war in Europe, AFP notes.

UPDATE 10:35 After all, the Swedish Academy of Sciences made a new surprise on Monday: the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Svante Pääbo, a Swede, for his discoveries about the genome of extinct hominins and human evolution.

Physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday, and then the two most anticipated prizes: literature on Thursday and peace on Friday, the only prize announced in Oslo. The economics award, which is a newer category, will conclude its 2022 edition next Monday.

One of the favorites for the prize in medicine was Mary-Claire King

In medicine this year, forecasting experts regularly mentioned a female name: the name of the American geneticist Mary-Claire King. In 1990, he discovered the gene responsible for breast cancer, the most common malignancy in women.

At the age of 76, her name was mentioned alongside that of other pioneers of therapeutic antibodies against breast cancer, her compatriot Dennis Slaymon and the German Axel Ulrich, the creator of trastuzumab treatment.

If the Nobel jury abandoned the traditional caution of awarding prizes based on a minimum age, another woman would have a good chance of participating in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Catalin Carico and RNA technology

Hungarian-American Katalin Kariko, a long-marginalized researcher who has already won almost every other major medical award in the past two years, can be honored for her pioneering role in messenger RNA vaccines.

“It’s not just about the immediate benefit it brings us in the face of the pandemic, but also about the first in a series of very promising applications for this technology,” says Ulrika Björksten, head of science at Swedish Public Radio.

Last year, the prize was awarded to two Americans, David Julius and Ardem Pataputyan, for their discovery of sensory function. An award related to physiology, which involves more of a medical award this year.

In recent decades, American and American male researchers have largely dominated the Nobel Prizes in science, despite efforts by juries to award more women.

The year 2021 of the Nobel Prize was no exception: 12 men and only one woman became laureates. All scientific awards went to men.

(article photo: © Bertil Jonsson | Dreamstime.com)