Americans James Rothman and Randy Schekman and Germany's Thomas Suedhof won the 2013 Nobel medicine prize for their work on how hormones are transported within and outside cells, giving insight into diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer's. 

 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.

The Nobel Committee said the work of the three scientists had great implications for neurological conditions as well as conditions affecting key organs.

For example, their research sheds light on how insulin is manufactured and released into the blood at the right place at the right time, the Nobel committee said in the statement.

Medicine is the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year. Prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901 in accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel.

Rothman is professor at Yale University, Schekman is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, while Suedhof is a professor at Stanford University.

Their work cantered on the 'vesicle' system by which cells take up nutrients, move substances around and release chemicals like hormones and growth factors.

(Source: Reuters)