🔗 Share this article

The prestigious award in Physiology or Medicine was granted for revolutionary findings that illuminate how the immune system attacks harmful infections while sparing the healthy tissues.

Three renowned researchers—Japan's Shimon Sakaguchi and US scientists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell—received this accolade.

Their work identified unique "security guards" within the defense system that remove malfunctioning immune cells that could attacking the organism.

The discoveries are now paving the way for innovative therapies for immune disorders and malignancies.

These laureates will share a monetary award valued at 11 million SEK.

Crucial Discoveries

"The work has been essential for comprehending how the body's defenses operates and the reason we don't all suffer from serious self-attack conditions," commented the chair of the Nobel Committee.

The team's studies explain a fundamental mystery: In what way does the defense system defend us from numerous invaders while keeping our healthy cells intact?

The immune system uses immune cells that search for indicators of disease, even pathogens and germs it has not met before.

Such defenders utilize sensors—called recognition units—that are generated randomly in countless combinations.

That gives the immune system the capacity to combat a wide array of invaders, but the unpredictability of the mechanism unavoidably creates immune cells that may target the host.

Protectors of the Body

Scientists previously knew that a portion of these problematic defense cells were destroyed in the thymus—where white blood cells mature.

The latest Nobel Prize recognizes the identification of regulatory T-cells—known as the body's "peacekeepers"—which travel through the system to disarm other immune cells that attack the healthy cells.

It is known that this process malfunctions in autoimmune diseases such as juvenile diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

The Nobel panel added, "These discoveries have laid the foundation for a novel area of research and accelerated the creation of innovative therapies, for instance for cancer and immune disorders."

Regarding cancer, regulatory T-cells block the body from fighting the tumor, so research are focused on reducing their numbers.

For autoimmune diseases, trials are exploring increasing regulatory T-cells so the organism is no longer being harmed. A similar method could also be effective in reducing the chances of organ transplant failure.

Innovative Experiments

Professor Sakaguchi, from Osaka University, performed experiments on rodents that had their immune gland extracted, leading to autoimmune disease.

He demonstrated that injecting defense cells from other mice could stop the illness—suggesting there was a system for blocking defenders from harming the host.

Dr. Brunkow, from the Institute for Systems Biology in a US city, and Dr. Ramsdell, now at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, were investigating an inherited autoimmune disease in rodents and people that resulted in the discovery of a gene vital for the way T-regs function.

"The groundbreaking work has uncovered how the immune system is kept in check by T-reg cells, preventing it from mistakenly targeting the body's own tissues," commented a prominent biological science specialist.

"This work is a striking illustration of how basic physiological study can have far-reaching implications for public health."