Thomson Reuters has picked Kazutoshi Mori of Kyoto University and Peter Walter of the University of California, San Francisco as favourites to win this year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
According to Reuters, they are being considered forerunners for showing “that a mechanism known as the unfolded protein response acts as a "quality control system" inside cells, deciding whether damaged cells live or die.”
The other contenders being considered in their prediction list include Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University in St. Louis “for showing a relationship between diet and metabolism and microbes that live in the human gut.”
The group also picked a trio of researchers - Alexander Rudensky of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University, and Ethan Shevach of the National Institutes of Health - for discoveries relating to immune cells known as regulatory T cells and the function of Foxp3, a master regulator of these cells.