Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences conducted the Nobel Prize ceremony every year in different fields of chemistry. Nobel Prize is normally awarded for major contributions in the fields of chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. Jacobus Henricus van’t Hoff, of the Netherlands was the first to get Noble Prize in 1901 in the field of chemistry by his work.

“ discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions.”

The committee and institution announces the name of winners every year in October and the prize distribution ceremony held in December. This ceremony is normally held on 10th December, the death anniversary of Alford Nobel.
Nobel Prize is normally awarded to maximum three people every year. The prize consists of gold medal, cash grant and a diploma. The cash prize is approximately $1.4 million.

Ernest McCulloch and James Till won the prestigious Lasker Award in 2005 and experts say they could also be among the front-runners for a Nobel for their early 1970’s identification of the regenerative cells. Many winners of the Lasker Award — often dubbed “America’s Nobel” — go on to win Nobel Prizes.

Given their special abilities, stem cells offer the possibility to replace damaged cells, tissues and maybe organs to treat diseases such as Alzheimer’s, heart disease, diabetes, or rheumatoid arthritis.

Growing stem cells from human eggs has long been a controversial issue, but in a recent breakthrough scientists have managed to avoid the ethical quandaries by making human stem cells from ordinary skin cells.

Science writer Karin Bojs of Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, who has stood out as a leading Nobel guesser over the years, included Till and McCulloch among her candidates for the prize this year.

Other potential winners include long-standing U.S. hopefuls Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for their enzyme research. The trio’s discovery of the telomerases enzyme set the stage for research suggesting that cancer cells use telomerase to sustain their uncontrolled growth.

However, Bojs pointed out they could also be up for the Nobel Prize in chemistry because the line of distinction between the two awards is sometimes blurry.

As usual, the tightlipped award committee is giving no hints about who is in the running before presenting its decision in a news conference at Stockholm’s Karolinska institute.

read full article: Stem cell pioneers among Nobel Prize candidates