STOCKHOLM (AP) — This year's Nobel Prizes will kick off on Monday with the awarding of the medicine prize at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Last year, three scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries about how the immune system knows to attack germs and not our own bodies. The work by Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi uncovered a key pathway the body uses to keep the immune system in check, called peripheral immune tolerance. Experts called the findings critical to understanding autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Monday's medicine prize is followed by the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday.

After Friday’s peace prize is awarded, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced on Oct. 12.

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, small group of laureates or organization.

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Dazio reported from Berlin.

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AP Nobel Prizes: https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes