An Australian-born scientist, who won acclaim with an American colleague for research into the growth of cancer cells, has missed out on the coveted Nobel Medicine Prize this year.
Instead French and German scientists, credited with the discovery of the viruses behind AIDS and cervical cancer, scooped the prestigious award for 2008.
An Australian-born scientist, who won acclaim with an American colleague for research into the growth of cancer cells, missed out on the coveted prize.
France's Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, who shared one half of the award, discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, one of the biggest scourges of modern times.
Harald zur Hausen of Germany went against current dogma and claimed that human papilloma virus (HPV) causes cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women, the jury said.
The French pair's HIV discovery was "one prerequisite for the current understanding of the biology of the disease and its antiretroviral treatment", the Nobel citation said.
Their work "led to development of methods to diagnose infected patients and to screen blood products, which has limited the spread of the pandemic", it said.
"The combination of prevention and treatment has substantially decreased spread of the disease and dramatically increased life expectancy among treated patients," it added.
The Australian-born scientist, Elizabeth Blackburn, of the University of California, San Francisco, and her US colleague Carol Greider, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, won Germany's Paul Ehrlich Ludwig Darmstaedter prize earlier this year for studying how the enzyme telomerase affects cells.
In 2006, they shared the Lasker prize for basic medical research - often dubbed America's Nobel - with Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School.
Barre-Sinoussi, born in 1947, is a professor at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, heading up the Regulation of Retroviral Infections unit in the Virology department.
Montagnier, born in 1932, is a professor emeritus and director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention in Paris.
Zur Hausen was rewarded for his work against cervical cancer, which is sometimes called the silent killer of women because it is so often tragically undetected until too late.
"His discovery has led to characterisation of the natural history of HPV infection, and understanding of mechanisms of HPV-induced carcinogenesis and the development of prophylactic vaccines against HPV acquisition," the jury said.
Zur Hausen, 72, is a professor emeritus and former chairman and scientific director of the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg.
The medicine prize is the first award to be announced in this year's Nobel season.
The physics prize is to be announced Tuesday followed by the chemistry, literature and peace prizes in successive days.
The economics prize will wrap up the awards on October 13.
The Nobel prizes, founded by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, were first awarded in 1901.
The formal awarding of the prizes will take place in Stockholm on December 10.