Sweden's Svante Paabo wins 2022 Nobel Prize in medicine

Sweden's Svante Paabo was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine on Monday “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution," kicking off a week of winner announcements held under the shadow of the bloody war in Ukraine, report The Japan Times.

Paabo accomplished "something seemingly impossible" through his pioneering research, the Nobel committee said: sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans.

Paabo, who made the sensational discovery of a previously unknown hominin, Denisova, also found that gene transfer had occurred from these now extinct hominins to Homo sapiens following the migration out of Africa around 70,000 years ago, the committee said.

"This ancient flow of genes to present-day humans has physiological relevance today, for example affecting how our immune system reacts to infections."

Last year, the prize went to U.S. researchers David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries on human receptors for temperature and touch.

The medicine prize will be followed by the awards for physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday, while the peace prize — the most highly anticipated of the awards and the only one announced in Oslo — will follow on Friday, with the economics prize wrapping things up on Oct. 10.

But it is the Nobel Peace Prize that is expected to hold special significance this year.

Established more than 120 years ago before Europe was ravaged by two world wars, the Nobel Prizes will celebrate those who have "conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" after a year marked by bloodshed and devastation in Ukraine.

After Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov won the Peace Prize last year together with his Philippine colleague Maria Ressa in the name of freedom of expression, will the Norwegian Nobel Committee award another anti-Putin prize after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine?

The International Criminal Court, tasked with investigating war crimes in Ukraine, and the International Court of Justice — both based in The Hague — have been mentioned as possible laureates this year. So have jailed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny and Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.

Nobel Prize laureates will receive a Nobel Prize diploma, a Nobel Prize medal and a document detailing the Nobel Prize amount, which this year amounts to 10 million Swedish krona ($900,000).