Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded for Discoveries Concerning Peripheral Immune Tolerance
The Wire Staff
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New Delhi: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2025 has been awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi for their fundamental discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance that prevents the immune system from harming the body.
The immune system is a complex mechanism that protects the body from harmful pathogens. The laureates identified the immune system’s "security guards," regulatory T cells, which prevent immune cells from attacking our own body, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet announced on Monday.
"One of the immune system’s marvels is its ability to identify pathogens and differentiate them from the body’s own cells. The microbes that threaten our health do not wear a uniform – they all have different appearances. Many have also developed similarities to human cells, as a form of camouflage. So how does the immune system keep track of what to attack and what to protect? Why doesn’t the immune system attack our bodies more frequently?" the Nobel committee mentioned in a post on X.
The committee added, "Researchers long believed they knew the answer to these questions: that immune cells mature through a process called central immune tolerance. However, our immune system turned out to be more complex than they believed."
In 1995, Sakaguchi discovered a previously unknown class of immune cells that protect the body from autoimmune diseases. Later, Brunkow and Ramsdell found that mutations in the Foxp3 gene are responsible for a severe autoimmune disease called IPEX.
Two years after this, Sakaguchi was able to link these discoveries. He proved that this gene governs the development of regulatory T cells, which monitor other immune cells and ensure that the immune system tolerates the body's own tissues.
The Nobel committee recognised the significance of their work, stating that their discoveries have been "decisive for our understanding of how the immune system functions and why we do not all develop serious autoimmune diseases."
The laureates' discoveries have launched the field of peripheral tolerance and have led to the development of new treatments for cancer, autoimmune diseases, and transplantations. Several of these treatments are currently undergoing clinical trials.
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