🔗 Share this article

This year's prestigious award in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for transformative discoveries that illuminate how the body's defense network targets dangerous pathogens while protecting the healthy tissues.

A trio of esteemed researchers—Japan's Prof. Sakaguchi and American experts Dr. Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell—received this accolade.

The research uncovered specialized "sentinels" within the defense system that remove malfunctioning defense cells capable of harming the organism.

The findings are now enabling innovative treatments for immune disorders and cancer.

These winners will divide a monetary award worth 11 million Swedish kronor.

Decisive Discoveries

"Their work has been essential for understanding how the immune system operates and the reason we don't all suffer from serious autoimmune diseases," commented the head of the Nobel Committee.

This team's studies address a core mystery: How does the immune system defend us from countless invaders while keeping our healthy cells intact?

The immune system employs immune cells that search for indicators of disease, including pathogens and bacteria it has not met before.

Such defenders utilize detectors—known as receptors—that are produced randomly in countless combinations.

This gives the immune system the ability to combat a wide array of threats, but the randomness of the process unavoidably produces white blood cells that can attack the host.

Security Guards of the Immune System

Scientists earlier knew that some of these problematic white blood cells were eliminated in the thymus—where immune cells mature.

This year's award recognizes the discovery of regulatory T-cells—described as the body's "peacekeepers"—which patrol the system to neutralize other immune cells that assault the body's own tissues.

It is known that this process fails in self-attack conditions such as type-1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

A Nobel panel added, "These findings have established a novel area of research and spurred the creation of new treatments, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases."

Regarding cancer, regulatory T-cells block the system from fighting the tumor, so studies are focused on lowering their numbers.

For self-attack disorders, trials are testing boosting regulatory T-cells so the organism is not under attack. A similar approach could also be useful in minimizing the chances of organ transplant rejection.

Pioneering Experiments

Professor Sakaguchi, of a Japanese institution, conducted tests on mice that had their immune gland extracted, leading to self-attack conditions.

The researcher showed that introducing immune cells from healthy animals could prevent the illness—implying there was a system for preventing immune cells from attacking the host.

Mary Brunkow, affiliated with the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Fred Ramsdell, currently at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, were studying an inherited immune disorder in rodents and humans that resulted in the identification of a genetic factor vital for how T-regs function.

"The pioneering work has revealed how the body's defenses is controlled by regulatory T cells, stopping it from mistakenly targeting the healthy cells," commented a prominent physiology expert.

"This work is a striking illustration of how fundamental biological study can have far-reaching implications for human health."