Prestigious Prize Honors Groundbreaking Body's Defenses Discoveries

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for revolutionary discoveries that illuminate how the body's defense network attacks dangerous pathogens while protecting the body's own cells.

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

The work identified specialized "sentinels" within the immune system that eliminate malfunctioning defense cells capable of attacking the body.

These findings are now enabling new therapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer.

These laureates will share a prize fund worth 11 million Swedish kronor.

Decisive Findings

"The research has been essential for comprehending how the body's defenses functions and why we don't all develop severe self-attack conditions," commented the chair of the award panel.

The team's research explain a fundamental question: How does the immune system defend us from numerous invaders while leaving our own tissues intact?

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

Such defenders utilize sensors—called recognition units—that are generated randomly in a vast number of variations.

That gives the defense network the capacity to combat a wide array of threats, but the randomness of the mechanism unavoidably produces white blood cells that may target the body.

Protectors of the Immune System

Researchers earlier knew that a portion of these problematic white blood cells were destroyed in the thymus—where immune cells mature.

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

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

A Nobel panel added, "These discoveries have established a novel area of research and accelerated the creation of new treatments, for instance for cancer and immune disorders."

Regarding cancer, T-regs block the body from attacking the tumor, so research are focused on reducing their numbers.

For autoimmune diseases, trials are exploring boosting regulatory T-cells so the body is not being harmed. A comparable method could also be effective in reducing the risks of transplanted organ rejection.

Pioneering Experiments

Professor Sakaguchi, from Osaka University, performed experiments on rodents that had their immune gland removed, causing self-attack conditions.

The researcher demonstrated that introducing immune cells from other animals could prevent the disease—suggesting there was a system for blocking defenders from attacking the host.

Mary Brunkow, affiliated with the a research center in Seattle, and Dr. Ramsdell, currently at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, were investigating an inherited autoimmune disease in mice and humans that resulted in the identification of a gene critical for how regulatory T-cells function.

"The groundbreaking research has uncovered how the immune system is kept in check by regulatory T cells, preventing it from accidentally targeting the healthy cells," said a prominent physiology expert.

"This work is a striking illustration of how basic biological research can have broad consequences for human health."