Canadian scientist Ralph Steinman was named on Monday as Nobel Prize awardee for medicine for his pioneering work to help understand how cells fight disease. However, he did not live long enough to receive the award personally.

Steinman died of pancreatic cancer on Friday, three days before the announcement was made in Stockholm.

He discovered a cell that stimulates adaptive immunity which led to a new cancer treatment. It also helped prolong his life, but not long enough to get the award.

Claudia Steinman, the wife of the scientist, said they intended to disclose his death on Monday. However, they were surprised to get an email from the Nobel Committee informing them of his winning the Nobel Prize for medicine.

"It is incredibly sad news.... We can only regret that he didn't have the chance to receive the news he had won the Nobel Prize. Our thoughts are now with his family," The Australian quoted Nobel Foundation Chairman Lars Heikensten.

The Nobel Committee decided to declare the award valid because they were unaware that the scientist died just days before the announcement. Steinman's family would also receive the $1.5 million prize. Nobel rules do not allow posthumous awards since 1974, except when the laureate dies after the announcement and before the Dec. 10 award ceremony.

The last time a similar incident happened was in 1996 when William Vickrey, Nobel Prize awardee for economics, died a few days after the announcement was made.

Steinman, 68, shared the award with American scientist Bruce Beutler and French scientist Jules Hoffman for their discoveries about the disease-fighting immune system of the human body.

"When he got sick, he realised he needed to call upon these cells to induce a strong enough immune response to fight his tumour, and that is what he did," The Australian quoted Dr. Sarah Schlesinger, laboratory clinical director of the Rockefeller University, which was Steinman's employer.

However, there are questions in the scientific community if the experimental therapy that Steinman designed was responsible for prolonging his life by more than four years. Pancreatic cancer patients normally die within one year of diagnosis.

"It is a disservice to the field for anyone to say that his immune therapy prolonged his life," University of California pancreatic cancer specialist Dr Alan Venook told The Australian. He agreed that while surviving pancreatic cancer for four years is a long period, it is not out of the question since survival rate depends on the type and advanced state of the cancer when diagnosed.