🔗 Share this article

This year's prestigious award in Physiology or Medicine was granted for revolutionary findings that illuminate how the immune system targets harmful infections while sparing the body's own cells.

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

Their work uncovered specialized "security guards" within the defense system that eliminate malfunctioning immune cells capable of harming the body.

These findings are now enabling new treatments for immune disorders and cancer.

These laureates will divide a prize fund worth 11 million SEK.

Crucial Findings

"Their work has been essential for comprehending how the body's defenses operates and the reason we don't all develop serious autoimmune diseases," commented the chair of the Nobel Committee.

The team's studies explain a core mystery: In what way does the defense system protect us from numerous invaders while keeping our own tissues intact?

Our body's protection system employs white blood cells that scan for indicators of infection, including viruses and bacteria it has never encountered.

These cells utilize detectors—known as recognition units—that are produced randomly in a vast number of combinations.

That provides the defense network the capacity to combat a wide array of threats, but the unpredictability of the mechanism inevitably produces white blood cells that can target the body.

Protectors of the Immune System

Scientists previously understood that a portion of these harmful white blood cells were eliminated in the immune organ—where white blood cells mature.

This year's Nobel Prize recognizes the identification of regulatory T-cells—described as the immune system's "security guards"—which travel through the body to neutralize any immune cells that assault the body's own tissues.

We know that this mechanism malfunctions in self-attack conditions such as type-1 diabetes, MS, and RA.

The Nobel panel stated, "These discoveries have laid the foundation for a new field of research and accelerated the development of innovative treatments, for instance for tumors and autoimmune diseases."

In malignancies, regulatory T-cells block the system from fighting the tumor, so studies are focused on reducing their numbers.

For autoimmune diseases, experiments are exploring increasing regulatory T-cells so the body is no longer under attack. A comparable method could also be useful in reducing the risks of transplanted organ rejection.

Innovative Experiments

Professor Shimon Sakaguchi, of a Japanese institution, performed tests on rodents that had their thymus removed, causing autoimmune disease.

The researcher showed that injecting immune cells from other mice could stop the disease—suggesting there was a mechanism for preventing immune cells from attacking the host.

Mary Brunkow, affiliated with the Institute for Systems Biology in a US city, and Dr. Ramsdell, now at a biotech firm in a California city, were studying an inherited autoimmune disease in mice and humans that led to the identification of a gene critical for the way regulatory T-cells operate.

"The pioneering research has revealed how the immune system is kept in check by T-reg cells, stopping it from mistakenly targeting the body's own tissues," commented a leading physiology expert.

"The work is a striking example of how basic biological study can have far-reaching consequences for human health."