Prestigious Prize Honors Pioneering Body's Defenses Research

This year's prestigious award in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for revolutionary discoveries that clarify how the immune system targets dangerous pathogens while sparing the body's own cells.

A trio of renowned researchers—Japan's Shimon Sakaguchi and US experts Mary Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell—received this honor.

The work uncovered unique "security guards" within the defense system that remove rogue immune cells capable of harming the organism.

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

These laureates will divide a prize fund valued at 11m Swedish kronor.

Decisive Discoveries

"Their work has been essential for understanding how the immune system operates and why we don't all develop serious autoimmune diseases," stated the head of the Nobel Committee.

The team's research address a core question: How does the defense system defend us from numerous infections while keeping our healthy cells unharmed?

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

These cells employ detectors—known as recognition units—that are produced by chance in a vast number of variations.

That provides the defense network the ability to fight a broad range of invaders, but the randomness of the mechanism inevitably produces white blood cells that may target the host.

Security Guards of the Body

Scientists previously knew that some of these harmful defense cells were eliminated in the immune organ—where white blood cells develop.

The latest award honors the discovery of T-reg cells—described as the body's "security guards"—which travel through the system to disarm any immune cells that attack the healthy cells.

It is known that this mechanism fails in self-attack conditions such as type-1 diabetes, MS, and rheumatoid arthritis.

A prize committee stated, "These findings have established a new field of research and accelerated the creation of new therapies, for instance for cancer and immune disorders."

In cancer, regulatory T-cells block the system from attacking the tumor, so studies are aimed at lowering their quantity.

For autoimmune diseases, trials are exploring increasing regulatory T-cells so the body is no longer under attack. A comparable method could also be useful in reducing the chances of organ transplant failure.

Pioneering Studies

Prof Shimon Sakaguchi, of a Japanese institution, performed tests on rodents that had their thymus removed, causing self-attack conditions.

The researcher showed that injecting defense cells from healthy mice could stop the disease—implying there was a mechanism for preventing defenders from harming the body.

Dr. Brunkow, from the Institute for Systems Biology in a US city, and Fred Ramsdell, currently at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, were investigating an inherited immune disorder in mice and humans that led to the identification of a gene critical for the way T-regs operate.

"The pioneering work has uncovered how the body's defenses is kept in check by regulatory T cells, stopping it from accidentally targeting the healthy cells," commented a leading physiology specialist.

"The research is a remarkable example of how basic biological study can have far-reaching consequences for public health."