Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi, winner of this year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, has been awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the prize foundation said Monday.
The Breakthrough Prize Foundation, launched by the founders of companies including Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., honored Ohsumi's research for elucidating mechanisms for autophagy, an intracellular process that degrades and recycles proteins.
"I am truly honored. I will continue to make efforts for the development of research in this field," the honorary professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology said in a statement.
The awards celebrate outstanding research in three scientific fields: fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics.
Last year, the 2015 Nobel laureate in physics, Takaaki Kajita, director of the University of Tokyo's Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
Ohsumi left Japan last Friday to attend the Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm. The event is scheduled for Saturday.
