Researcher Ralph Steinman was awarded this year's 2011 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work on dendritic cells, a class of immune cells which eventually led to the development of the prostate cancer vaccine Provenge. Steinman died from pancreatic cancer days before the announcement of his win.
In 2007, writes Scientific American's Katherine Harmon, Steinman won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research for his discovery. In this video from the Lasker Foundation, Steinman describes his discovery of how dendritic cells work — a discovery which, Harmon says, likely prolonged his life for years more than was expected after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.