Nobel Prizes in Physics and Medicine Awarded to Japanese Scholars

Earlier in September, Thomson Reuters Corporation, the major multinational mass media and information firm, raised 18 would-be candidates for this year's Nobel Prizes, among whom were two Japanese professors - Kazutoshi Mori of Kyoto University, 57, and Shimon

Sakaguchi of Osaka University, 64, both in Physiology or Medicine, the same prize Dr. Yamanaka received in 2012.

The corporation had predicted 238 candidates and 37 of them were actually awarded Nobel Prizes from 2002 to last year.
Their forecast proved accurate in the number but false in the choice of persons. Accurate enough, two Japanese scientists were awarded this year, one in Physiology or Medicine and the other in Physics - Dr. Satoshi Omura, organic chemist, Kitasata University, and Professor Takaaki Kajita of Tokyo University, respectively.

It was a balanced mixture of information for which this corporation globally renowned. The whole nation is grinning tonight at the news two leading Japanese scientists selected Nobel prize laureates.

A great deal must already be talked and written about Prof. Kajita and his discovery on the mass of a neutrino which points to a wide expanse of possibilities in man's existence. So, this episode dare throw light exclusively on the achievement of Dr. Omura and what it promises to entail in human life.

Dr. Omura was awarded the prize jointly with William C. Cambell of Drew University and Youyou Tu of China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Dr. Omura fascinates the world with his highly organic approach in developing medicine far apart from today's heavily synthetic methods based on PC and genome sequencer. A gram of soil is known to contain over 500 million microbes. Dr. Omura traced in actinomycete a substance effective on tropical diseases. He passed the data on to Dr. Cambell at Merck & Co.､who subsequently traced in it another substance that is most effective for the treatment of parasitic diseases. His team refined this substance into a medicine called ivermectin.

Ivermectin is today known to cure tropical diseases at large. Dr. Omura's achievement links directly to the wellbeing of man -  a truly organic contribution, indeed.