NEW YORK — Ralph Steinman, a pioneer in understanding how the cells of the body fight disease, tried to help his own immune system thwart his pancreatic cancer.
Steinman survived until Friday. Three days later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
The Nobel committee, unaware of his death, announced the award Monday in Stockholm. Steinman’s employer, Rockefeller University in New York, learned he had died only after the Nobel announcement.
Steinman’s wife, Claudia, said the family had planned to disclose his death Monday — only to discover an e-mail to his cellphone from the Nobel committee.
Friends and colleagues were stunned by the news of the 68-year-old’s death.
“For the last five years, I’ve gotten up in the morning of the Nobel Prize announcement and rushed to the computer to see his name,” said Olivera J. Finn of the University of Pittsburgh. “And this morning I saw it, and I just totally shrieked with joy.”
Then she heard the bad news from a friend in Singapore. “I have been this whole morning . . . out of breath like somebody punched me in the stomach,” Finn said.
Experts disagree whether Steinman’s research helped him live for 4 1/2 years after he was diagnosed. A colleague in his lab thinks it did: The chances of making it even a year with his type of cancer are less than 5 percent.
Nobel officials said they believed it was the first time a laureate had died before the announcement without the committee’s knowledge.
“It is incredibly sad news,” said Nobel Foundation chairman Lars Heikensten. “We can only regret that he didn’t have the chance to receive the news he had won the Nobel Prize. Our thoughts are now with his family.”
Since 1974, Nobel rules haven’t allowed posthumous awards unless a laureate dies after the announcement but before the award ceremony. However, the committee said Monday that Steinman’s prize would stand and that his survivors would receive his share of the $1.5 million prize money.
Steinman was awarded the prize along with American Bruce Beutler and French scientist Jules Hoffmann. They were honored for discoveries about the body’s disease-fighting immune system.
Steinman discovered so-called dendritic cells in 1973. These cells regulate the activity of other cells — Steinman called them the conductor of the immune system.
“When he got sick, he realized he needed to call upon these cells to induce a strong enough immune response to fight his tumor, and that is what he did,” said Dr. Sarah Schlesinger, clinical director for his lab.
Steinman tried eight to 10 experimental therapies approved by the federal government, focusing in various ways on revving up his immune system to fight his cancer, Schlesinger said.
Steinman was the only patient, with no control group — other patients with the same cancer for comparison, a scientific must for convincing evidence.
“It’s not the kind of experiment Ralph would have liked to have done,” said Rockefeller colleague Dr. Michel Nussenzweig.
Hoffmann, 70, headed a research laboratory in Strasbourg, France, between 1974 and 2009 and served as president of the French National Academy of Sciences in 2007-08.
Beutler, 53, holds dual appointments at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and as professor of genetics and immunology at Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. He will become a full-time faculty member at the Dallas medical center Dec. 1.
Beutler and Hoffmann were cited for their discoveries in the 1990s of receptor proteins that can recognize bacteria and other microorganisms as they enter the body, and activate the first line of defense in the immune system, known as innate immunity.
