🔗 Share this article

This year's prestigious award in Physiology or Medicine was granted for revolutionary findings that clarify how the body's defense network attacks harmful pathogens while protecting the healthy tissues.

Three esteemed scientists—Japan's Prof. Sakaguchi and US scientists Dr. Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell—share this honor.

The research identified specialized "sentinels" within the immune system that remove rogue defense cells that could attacking the organism.

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

These winners will divide a prize fund worth 11 million Swedish kronor.

Decisive Findings

"Their research has been essential for understanding how the body's defenses functions and the reason we don't all develop serious self-attack conditions," commented the chair of the Nobel Committee.

This trio's research address a core mystery: How does the immune system defend us from numerous infections while leaving our healthy cells intact?

Our body's protection system uses white blood cells that search for signs of disease, even viruses and bacteria it has not met before.

Such cells employ sensors—called 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 randomness of the mechanism inevitably creates white blood cells that may target the host.

Security Guards of the Body

Researchers previously understood that some of these problematic defense cells were destroyed in the immune organ—the site where white blood cells develop.

This year's Nobel Prize recognizes the identification of regulatory T-cells—described as the immune system's "peacekeepers"—which patrol the system to disarm other defenders that attack the healthy cells.

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

A prize committee added, "These findings have laid the foundation for a new field of research and accelerated the development of new therapies, for instance for cancer and autoimmune diseases."

In cancer, T-regs prevent the system from attacking the tumor, so studies are aimed at lowering their quantity.

For self-attack disorders, experiments are exploring increasing regulatory T-cells so the organism is no longer under attack. A comparable method could also be effective in reducing the risks of organ transplant failure.

Pioneering Studies

Professor Shimon Sakaguchi, from a Japanese institution, performed experiments on rodents that had their immune gland removed, causing autoimmune disease.

The researcher demonstrated that injecting immune cells from other mice could stop the disease—suggesting there was a system for blocking defenders from attacking the host.

Dr. Brunkow, affiliated with the a research center in Seattle, and Dr. Ramsdell, currently at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, were investigating an genetic autoimmune disease in rodents and people that led to the identification of a gene critical for the way T-regs function.

"The pioneering research has revealed how the immune system is kept in check by regulatory T cells, preventing it from accidentally targeting the body's own tissues," said a leading physiology specialist.

"This research is a remarkable example of how basic physiological research can have far-reaching consequences for human health."