Breast cancer discoveries and mRNA vaccines are being eyed as possible winners as the Nobel Prize in Medicine begins a week of winner announcements on Monday, with this year’s award ceremonies taking place in the shadow of war in Europe.

Established more than 120 years ago, before Europe was devastated by two world wars, the Nobel Prizes will honor those who have “brought the greatest benefit to mankind” after a year of bloodshed and devastation in Ukraine.

The medicine prize will be announced in Stockholm around 11:30 (0930 GMT) on Monday, followed by the prizes for physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday.

The Peace Prize, the much-anticipated prize and the only one announced in Oslo, follows on Friday, with the Business Prize concluding on October 10.

In medicine, the name of a woman keeps popping up among price watchers: the US geneticist Mary-Claire King, who discovered the BRCA1 gene in 1990, which is responsible for an inherited form of breast cancer.

She was honored along with oncologists Dennis Slamon from the USA and German Axel Ullrich for their research which led to the development of the breast cancer drug Herceptin.

However, should the jury break with its tradition of recognizing decades of research, another woman could be well placed for her role in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

A winner of almost every other major medical award, Hungarian-born Katalin Kariko has won for her groundbreaking research that led directly to the first mRNA vaccines to fight Covid-19, made by Pfizer and Moderna.

“Not only has it given us direct benefit in fighting the pandemic, it is also the first in a series of very promising applications using this technology,” said Nobel Observer Ulrika Bjorksten, the head of the science service at the Swedish public -legal broadcasting, told AFP.

Kariko was honored along with her collaborator Drew Weissman from the United States and Pieter Cullis from Canada.

Last year, the award went to US researchers David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries on human temperature and touch receptors.

David Pendlebury, who heads the closely watched analytics group Clarivate, which lists dozens of possible winners for the Nobel prizes in science, said his money is on King and Slamon this year.

But he also mentioned Hong Kong molecular biologist Yuk Ming Dennis Lo, who pioneered the development of non-invasive prenatal testing.

He also developed a new method for early detection of cancer using just a few drops of blood, called liquid biopsies.

With a simple blood draw “you can find all sorts of problems and diseases,” Pendlebury said.

Male researchers based in the United States have overwhelmingly dominated the Nobel Prizes in Science over the years.

The various awards committees have insisted they are trying to recognize women’s achievements, but say many of the best discoveries were made decades ago, when fewer women were involved in high-level research.

Last year, 12 men and one woman won Nobel Prizes, with all scientific credits going to men.

For Thursday’s literature prize, literary critics told AFP they thought the Swedish Academy would go for a mainstream author this year, having chosen lesser-known writers for the past two years.

Last year, Tanzanian author Abdulrazak Gurnah won, while in 2020 US poet Louise Gluck was crowned.

American writer Joyce Carol Oates, Frenchmen Annie Ernaux and Maryse Conde, Russian Lyudmila Ulitskaya and Canadian Margaret Atwood have all been named as potential winners if the committee has their eye on a woman.

However, online betting sites have Frenchman Michel Houellebecq as a favorite ahead of British author Salman Rushdie, who was the victim of an attempted assassination in August.

But it is the Peace Prize that is likely to be of particular importance this year.

After Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov won the prize last year alongside his Filipino colleague Maria Ressa in the name of freedom of expression, will the Norwegian Nobel Committee award another anti-Putin prize after Moscow invaded Ukraine?

There hasn’t been a conflict between two countries near Oslo since World War II.

The International Criminal Court, charged with investigating war crimes in Ukraine, and the International Court of Justice – both based in The Hague – have been named as potential award winners this year.

So did the imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny and the Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya.

If the committee were to focus on the climate crisis, pundits tipped Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, possibly alongside British environmentalist David Attenborough, or other activists like Sudan’s Nisreen Elsaim and Ghana’s Chibeze Ezekiel.