Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi was awarded this year's Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries about how cells break down and recycle parts of themselves in an internal garbage disposal process.

The Karolinska Institute honored Ohsumi for "brilliant experiments" in the 1990s on autophagy, a phenomenon that means "self-eating" and describes how cells gobble up damaged content and provide building blocks for renewal.

Disrupted autophagy has been linked to several diseases, including Parkinson's, diabetes and cancer, the institute said.