Nobel Award Recognizes Pioneering Body's Defenses Research

The prestigious award in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for transformative findings that illuminate how the body's defense network targets harmful pathogens while sparing the healthy tissues.

A trio of esteemed scientists—from Japan Shimon Sakaguchi and US scientists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell—share this accolade.

Their work identified specialized "sentinels" within the immune system that remove malfunctioning defense cells that could harming the organism.

These findings are now paving the way for new therapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer.

These winners will share a monetary award valued at 11 million SEK.

Decisive Discoveries

"The work has been decisive for understanding how the immune system operates and the reason we don't all suffer from severe autoimmune diseases," commented the head of the award panel.

This team's research address a core question: How does the defense system protect us from countless invaders while leaving our own tissues intact?

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

These cells employ detectors—called receptors—that are generated by chance in a vast number of combinations.

This provides the immune system the ability to combat a broad range of invaders, but the unpredictability of the mechanism inevitably produces white blood cells that may target the host.

Security Guards of the Immune System

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

The latest Nobel Prize recognizes the discovery of regulatory T-cells—described as the immune system's "peacekeepers"—which travel through the body to disarm any immune cells that assault the healthy cells.

We know that this mechanism malfunctions in self-attack conditions such as juvenile diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and RA.

The prize committee stated, "The discoveries have laid the foundation for a novel area of investigation and accelerated the creation of new treatments, for instance for tumors and immune disorders."

In cancer, regulatory T-cells prevent the body from fighting the tumor, so research are aimed at reducing their numbers.

In autoimmune diseases, trials are testing boosting regulatory T-cells so the organism is not under attack. A comparable method could also be effective in reducing the chances of transplanted organ failure.

Innovative Experiments

Professor Shimon Sakaguchi, of a Japanese institution, performed tests on mice that had their thymus extracted, causing autoimmune disease.

He showed that injecting defense cells from other animals could prevent the illness—suggesting there was a mechanism for preventing defenders from attacking the host.

Dr. Brunkow, from the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Fred Ramsdell, now at a biotech firm in San Francisco, were studying an genetic autoimmune disease in rodents and humans that resulted in the identification of a gene critical for the way T-regs function.

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

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