Yoshinori Ohsumi has won the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy, a process by which cells detoxify and repair themselves.
The Japanese cell biologist used baker's yeast to identify genes crucial for autophagy. He then explained the underlying method for autophagy in yeast and drew parallels with the similar functioning of the human cells.
In 1963, medicine Laureate Christian de Duve coined the term autophagy which means "self eating"
Last year, three scientists received the prize for developing treatments for malaria and tropical diseases.
Since 1905, this award is the 107th award in the category. Usually, the prizes are often awarded to discoveries that were made decades ago, so that they don't lose out on relevance. Each prize is worth 8 million kronor ($930,000).
This year, the medicine prize was announced at 11:30 am in Stockholm (0930 GMT).
According to the Associate Press, the Nobel Assembly has decided to continue with the announcements on Tuesday and Wednesday for physics and chemistry respectively while economics and literature awards will be declared next week.
The Nobel Peace Prize announcement will be on Friday, reported the news agency.
