Japanese cell biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi has won the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on autophagy: how cells in the human body repair themselves and detoxify. He will nab the award for “mechanisms for autophagy.” The scientist led a series of groundbreaking experiments in the early 1990s that helped researchers to understand the process and has advanced work on the inner mechanisms of diseases of everything from cancer to Parkinson’s. At least three other Nobel Prizes will be announced this week.
