🔗 Share this article

This year's Nobel Prize in medical science has been awarded for transformative discoveries that clarify how the body's defense network attacks harmful pathogens while sparing the body's own cells.

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

Their research uncovered unique "security guards" within the immune system that eliminate malfunctioning immune cells that could attacking the organism.

The discoveries are now enabling innovative therapies for autoimmune diseases and malignancies.

These laureates will share a prize fund valued at 11m Swedish kronor.

Crucial Findings

"The research has been decisive for understanding how the immune system functions and the reason we don't all suffer from severe self-attack conditions," stated the head of the award panel.

The trio's research address a core mystery: How does the defense system protect us from countless invaders while leaving our healthy cells intact?

Our body's protection system employs immune cells that search for signs of infection, even pathogens and germs it has never encountered.

Such defenders employ sensors—known as recognition units—that are generated randomly in countless combinations.

This gives the immune system the capacity to fight a wide array of invaders, but the randomness of the mechanism unavoidably creates white blood cells that can target the body.

Security Guards of the Immune System

Researchers earlier knew that some of these problematic white blood cells were eliminated in the thymus—the site where immune cells develop.

This year's award honors the discovery of T-reg cells—described as the body's "peacekeepers"—which patrol the body to disarm other defenders that attack the body's own tissues.

We know that this process fails in self-attack conditions such as type-1 diabetes, MS, and rheumatoid arthritis.

A prize committee stated, "These findings have established a novel area of investigation and accelerated the development of innovative therapies, for instance for cancer and immune disorders."

Regarding malignancies, T-regs block the system from attacking the tumor, so studies are focused on lowering their quantity.

For autoimmune diseases, trials are testing increasing regulatory T-cells so the organism is no longer under attack. A comparable method could also be effective in minimizing the chances of organ transplant rejection.

Pioneering Studies

Professor Shimon Sakaguchi, from a Japanese institution, conducted tests on rodents that had their immune gland removed, leading to autoimmune disease.

He demonstrated that injecting immune cells from other mice could prevent the disease—suggesting there was a system for blocking defenders from harming the host.

Mary Brunkow, from the a research center in Seattle, and Dr. Ramsdell, now at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in a California city, were studying an inherited immune disorder in mice and people that led to the identification of a gene critical for the way T-regs function.

"The groundbreaking work has uncovered how the immune system is controlled by T-reg cells, preventing it from mistakenly attacking the healthy cells," commented a leading biological science specialist.

"This research is a remarkable illustration of how fundamental physiological study can have far-reaching consequences for public health."