The 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine!
Copenhagen, Oct 6 (EFE).-
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Americans Mary E. Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell, and Japanese Shimon Sakaguchi “for their groundbreaking discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance that prevents the immune system from harming the body,” the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced Monday.
“The Nobel Prize laureates identified the immune system’s security guards, regulatory T cells, thus laying the foundation for a new field of research,” the Assembly said.
“The discoveries have also led to the development of potential medical treatments that are now being evaluated in clinical trials. The hope is to be able to treat or cure autoimmune diseases, provide more effective cancer treatments and prevent serious complications after stem cell transplants,” it added.
Several of these treatments are currently in clinical trials.
Sakaguchi discovered a new class of T cells in 1995, a key finding, as at the time many researchers were convinced that immune tolerance only developed due to the elimination of potentially harmful immune cells in the thymus, through a process called central tolerance.
The scientist demonstrated that the immune system is more complex and discovered a previously unknown class of immune cells that protects the body from autoimmune diseases.
Brunkow and Ramsdel gained decisive insights into the origins of autoimmune diseases after making a significant discovery in 2001, when they explained why a specific strain of mice (called scurfy) is particularly vulnerable to autoimmune diseases.
Both scientists discovered that the mice had a mutation in a gene they called Foxp3, and they also demonstrated that mutations in the human equivalent of this gene cause a serious autoimmune disease, IPEX. EFE
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