Nobel Prize Honors Pioneering Immune System Research

This year's prestigious award in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded for revolutionary findings that clarify how the body's defense network attacks harmful pathogens while sparing the healthy tissues.

A trio of esteemed researchers—from Japan Shimon Sakaguchi and American experts Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell—share this accolade.

The work identified unique "sentinels" within the defense system that remove malfunctioning immune cells capable of attacking the organism.

The findings are now paving the way for new treatments for immune disorders and cancer.

The laureates will divide a monetary award worth 11m Swedish kronor.

Crucial Findings

"The work has been decisive for understanding how the body's defenses operates and why we don't all develop severe self-attack conditions," commented the head of the Nobel Committee.

The trio's research address a core question: In what way does the immune system defend us from countless invaders while keeping our own tissues unharmed?

Our body's protection system employs white blood cells that search for indicators of infection, including viruses and germs it has not met before.

Such defenders employ sensors—called receptors—that are generated randomly in countless combinations.

That gives the defense network the ability to fight a wide array of invaders, but the unpredictability of the mechanism inevitably produces immune cells that can target the host.

Security Guards of the Immune System

Scientists earlier knew that a portion of these problematic white blood cells were eliminated in the immune organ—the site where immune cells mature.

This year's Nobel Prize honors the identification of T-reg cells—known as the body's "peacekeepers"—which patrol the system to neutralize any defenders that assault the healthy cells.

We know that this mechanism malfunctions in autoimmune diseases such as type-1 diabetes, MS, and RA.

A prize committee added, "The findings have laid the foundation for a novel area of investigation and accelerated the creation of new treatments, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases."

Regarding malignancies, T-regs block the system from attacking the tumor, so research are aimed at lowering their numbers.

For self-attack disorders, experiments are exploring increasing regulatory T-cells so the organism is no longer being harmed. A similar approach could also be useful in minimizing the risks of organ transplant rejection.

Pioneering Studies

Professor Sakaguchi, from Osaka University, conducted tests on mice that had their immune gland extracted, leading to autoimmune disease.

He showed that introducing defense cells from other animals could stop the disease—implying there was a system for blocking defenders from harming the host.

Mary Brunkow, from the a research center in a US city, and Fred Ramsdell, currently at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in a California city, were studying an inherited immune disorder in rodents and humans that resulted in the identification of a gene vital for the way T-regs operate.

"The pioneering work has revealed how the body's defenses is controlled by T-reg cells, preventing it from mistakenly targeting the healthy cells," said a prominent biological science expert.

"This research is a remarkable example of how fundamental physiological study can have broad consequences for human health."