The Latest: Japanese Scientist Wins Nobel Medicine Prize

The Latest on the first of this year’s Nobel Prizes: the award in medicine or physiology (all times local):

11:35 a.m.

Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering the mechanisms of autophagy.

The Karolinska Institute said autophagy is a “fundamental process for degrading and recycling cellular components.”

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10:20 a.m.

The Nobel Assembly at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute is getting ready to announce the first of this year’s Nobel Prizes: the award in medicine or physiology.

It will be the 107th award in that category since the first Nobel Prizes were handed out in 1905.

The prize committee often awards discoveries that were made decades ago, to make sure that they’re still relevant.

Last year’s prize was shared by three scientists who developed treatments for malaria and tropical diseases.

The 2016 medicine prize is set to be announced at 11:30 a.m. in Stockholm (0930 GMT).

The announcements continue with physics on Tuesday and chemistry on Wednesday and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The economics and literature awards will be announced next week.

Each prize is worth 8 million kronor ($930,000).