🔗 Share this article

This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was granted for transformative findings that illuminate how the body's defense network targets dangerous pathogens while protecting the healthy tissues.

Three renowned researchers—Japan's Prof. Sakaguchi and American experts Dr. Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell—received this accolade.

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

These discoveries are now enabling new treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer.

The winners will share a monetary award worth 11m Swedish kronor.

Decisive Discoveries

"Their work has been decisive for comprehending how the body's defenses operates and the reason we don't all suffer from serious self-attack conditions," commented the head of the Nobel Committee.

The trio's studies explain a core mystery: In what way does the defense system defend us from countless infections while leaving our own tissues intact?

The immune system uses white blood cells that search for signs of infection, including viruses and germs it has never encountered.

Such cells utilize detectors—called recognition units—that are produced randomly in countless combinations.

That provides the defense network the capacity to fight a wide array of invaders, but the randomness of the process inevitably produces white blood cells that can target the body.

Protectors of the Body

Researchers earlier knew that some of these harmful white blood cells were eliminated in the thymus—the site where white blood cells mature.

The latest Nobel Prize recognizes the discovery of T-reg cells—described as the immune system's "security guards"—which travel through the body to neutralize other defenders that assault the healthy cells.

It is known that this mechanism fails in autoimmune diseases such as type-1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and RA.

A Nobel panel stated, "These discoveries have established a novel area of investigation and spurred the creation of new therapies, for example for tumors and autoimmune diseases."

In cancer, regulatory T-cells block the body from attacking the growth, so research are aimed at lowering their quantity.

For autoimmune diseases, experiments are testing increasing regulatory T-cells so the organism is no longer under attack. A similar approach could also be effective in reducing the chances of organ transplant rejection.

Pioneering Studies

Prof Sakaguchi, of Osaka University, conducted experiments on rodents that had their thymus removed, causing self-attack conditions.

He showed that injecting defense cells from healthy animals could stop the disease—implying there was a mechanism for blocking defenders from harming the host.

Mary Brunkow, affiliated with the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Dr. Ramsdell, now at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, were investigating an inherited autoimmune disease in mice and people that led to the discovery of a gene critical for how T-regs function.

"Their groundbreaking research has uncovered how the body's defenses is kept in check by T-reg cells, stopping it from accidentally targeting the body's own tissues," said a prominent physiology expert.

"The work is a remarkable example of how fundamental biological research can have broad implications for public health."