Work on "cell traffic" and disease triggers wins Nobel prize

Portraits of winners of the 2013 Nobel prize for medicine or physiology, James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas Suedhof (L-R), are displayed on a screen at the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm October 7, 2013. REUTERS/Janerik Henriksson/TT News Agency

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Three U.S.-based scientists won the Nobel medicine prize on Monday for plotting how vital materials such as hormones and brain chemicals are transported within cells and secreted to act on the body, giving insight into diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer's.

Americans James Rothman, 62, Randy Schekman, 64, and German-born Thomas Suedhof, 57, separately mapped out one of the body's critical networks that uses tiny bubbles known as vesicles to ferry chemicals such as insulin within cells.