- Title: Japan's Nobel laureate 'really nervous' about award ceremony
- Date: 7th December 2016
- Summary: STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN (DECEMBER 7, 2016) (REUTERS) ****WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** NOBEL MEDICINE LAUREATE, YOSHINORI OHSUMI, ENTERING ROOM MEDIA WAITING FOR CONFERENCE TO START (SOUNDBITE) (English) NOBEL MEDICINE LAUREATE, YOSHINORI OHSUMI, SAYING: "Now gradually, I am just now feeling it, now I'm in Stockholm and of course I'm really nervous because I should have a lecture soon and I still have many formal ceremonies. I'm not so familiar with those kinds of things but now I will enjoy all those things." NEWS CONFERENCE IN PROGRESS MEDIA REPRESENTATIVES LISTENING (SOUNDBITE) (English) NOBEL MEDICINE LAUREATE, YOSHINORI OHSUMI, SAYING: "When I started my work I never thought that autophagy would be relevant to diseases. But now autophagy has become a really big field in science so that kind of thing happened many times in history of science so you need not to start with a popular thing so you had better find the seed of something important." NEWS CONFERENCE IN PROGRESS (SOUNDBITE) (English) NOBEL MEDICINE LAUREATE, YOSHINORI OHSUMI, SAYING: "My starting point was a microscopical observation of the phenomena. That was really the starting point and I was pretty much convinced when I saw that it's quite a simple observation, but I thought it might be a very important finding, I convinced myself." MEDIA REPRESENTATIVES LISTENING (SOUNDBITE) (English) NOBEL MEDICINE LAUREATE, YOSHINORI OHSUMI, SAYING: "So many people are working (on autophagy) now so they will find many many clues to solve many many unknown facts." CAMERAMAN FILMING NEWS CONFERENCE IN PROGRESS
- Embargoed: 22nd December 2016 13:21
- Keywords: Nobel medicine Yoshinori Ohsumi
- Location: STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
- City: STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
- Country: Sweden
- Reuters ID: LVA0015BVXPVR
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:Japan's Yoshinori Ohsumi, who won the 2016 Nobel prize for medicine, said on Wednesday (December 7) he was looking forward to a week of events culminating in the award ceremony and banquet on Saturday (December 10).
Ohsumi will give the traditional Nobel Lecture later that day on the process, called "autophagy" or "self-eating".
His ground-breaking experiments with yeast which exposed a key mechanism in the body's defences where cells degrade and recycle their components has led to a better understanding of diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's and type 2 diabetes.
"When I started my work I never thought that autophagy would be relevant to diseases. But now autophagy has become a really big field in science so that kind of thing happened many times in history of science," Ohsumi said.
Ohsumi, born in 1945 in Fukuoka, Japan, has been a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology since 2009.
His work - carried out in the 1990s and described by commentators as "paradigm-shifting" and "pioneering" - included locating the genes that regulate autophagy.
This is important for medicine because it helps show why errors in these genes can contribute to a range of diseases.
The award ceremony will take place at the Stockholm Concert Hall on Saturday (December 10), followed by a royal banquet at the City Hall. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
