Nobel prize week has kicked off with the winners of the medicine award announced on Monday.
American and Japanese cancer researchers were presented the award for their groundbreaking discoveries in treating cancer.
Kim Hyo-sun tells us more.
The 2018 Nobel Prize for medicine has been jointly awarded to
James Allison of the University of Texas and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University,... for discovering a cancer therapy that involves our immune system to attack tumors.
Their game-changing discoveries in cancer treatment involve harnessing and manipulating the immune system to fight cancer.

"The seminal discoveries by the two laureates constitutes a paradigmatic shift and a landmark in the fight against cancer."

They are the first Nobel Prize winners of the year, as medicine or physiology is the first of five categories to be given out this week.
Their discoveries have created a billion-dollar market for new cancer medicines,... especially offering new options for patients fighting against melanoma, lung and bladder cancers.

"I think that immunotherapy is going to be part, it's not going to replace all those others, but it's going to be part of the therapy that essentially all cancer patients are going to receive, be receiving in five years or so. And they're going to be curative. They're going to be curative in a lot of patients."

Professor Tasuku Honjo, who's 76 years old, says he won't be resting on his laurels anytime soon.

"I would like to keep on doing my research for a while so that this immune treatment could save more cancer patients, and I wish this treatment develops as many researchers in the world are working hard on it."

However, there will be no laureate for literature this year, as key figures involved in the nomination and selection of winners are embroiled in a #meToo scandal.
Without the literature award, the next most anticipated winner announcement this year would be that of the Nobel Peace prize laureate, to be announced in Oslo on Friday.
Kim Hyo-sun, Arirang News.