TOKYO (dpa-AFX) - The 2025 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been jointly awarded to a Japanese immunologist and two US researchers for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.
Mary E. Brunkow, researcher at Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle; Fred Ramsdell, a researcher at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, San Francisco; and Shimon Sakaguchi, a professor at Osaka University, will share the prize money equally.
'The body's powerful immune system must be regulated, or it may attack our own organs. Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi are awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 for their groundbreaking discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance that prevents the immune system from harming the body,' the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute said in a press release.
Every day, the human immune system protects the body from thousands of different microbes trying to invade it. These all have different appearances, and many have developed similarities with human cells as a form of camouflage. So how does the immune system determine what it should attack and what it should defend?
The laureates identified the immune system's security guards, or regulatory T cells, which prevent immune cells from attacking the human body.
'Their discoveries have been decisive for our understanding of how the immune system functions and why we do not all develop serious autoimmune diseases,' says Olle Kämpe, chair of the Nobel Committee.
Shimon Sakaguchi made the first key discovery in 1995. At the time, many researchers were convinced that immune tolerance only developed due to potentially harmful immune cells being eliminated in the thymus, through a process called central tolerance. Sakaguchi showed that the immune system is more complex and discovered a previously unknown class of immune cells, which protect the body from autoimmune diseases.
Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell made the other key discovery in 2001, when they presented the explanation for why a specific mouse strain was particularly vulnerable to autoimmune diseases. They had discovered that the mice have a mutation in a gene that they named Foxp3. They also showed that mutations in the human equivalent of this gene cause a serious autoimmune disease, IPEX.
Two years after this, Shimon Sakaguchi was able to link these discoveries. He proved that the Foxp3 gene governs the development of the cells he identified in 1995. These cells, now known as regulatory T cells, monitor other immune cells and ensure that human immune system tolerates its own tissues.
The laureates' discoveries launched the field of peripheral tolerance, spurring the development of medical treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases. This may also lead to more successful transplantations, according to the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute. Several of these treatments are now undergoing clinical trials.
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