Nobel Prize for immune system stops destructive rampage

The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine 2025 has been awarded for discoveries that explain how the immune system attacks hostile infections, but not the own cells of the body.

The price is shared by Shimon Sakaguchi in Japan and American researchers Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell.

They discovered “security agents” that eliminate certain parts of the immune system that could attack the body.

Their work is used to develop new treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer.

The winners share a price worth 11 million Swedish Kronor (£ 870,000).

“Their discoveries were decisive for our understanding of the functioning of the immune system and why we do not all develop serious autoimmune diseases,” explains Olle Kämpe, president of the Nobel Committee.

The research of the trio is essential to understand the functioning of the immune system-how does it protect us from thousands of different infections that try to invade the body? But, at the same time, leaves our own unscathed fabrics?

Our immune system uses white blood cells that are looking for signs of infection – even viruses and bacteria that he has never encountered before.

Cells use sensors – called receivers – which are randomly made in a quadrillion different combinations.

This gives immune systems the ability to attack a wide variety of invaders, but the randomness of the process inevitably makes white blood cells that can attack our body.

Scientists already knew that some of these problematic white blood cells were destroyed in the thymus – where white blood cells ripen.

The Nobel Prize this year is going to discover regulatory T cells – known as the immune system safety guards – which roam the body to disarm any other immune cell attacking the body.

We know that this process fails in autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.

The Nobel Panel added: “Discoveries have laid the foundations for a new field of research and stimulated the development of new treatments, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases.”

In cancer, regulatory T cells prevent the body from fighting the tumor, so research is focused on reducing their number.

In autoimmune diseases, tests plan to stimulate regulatory T cells so that the body is no longer attacked. A similar approach could also be effective in reducing the risks of a rejected organ transplant.

Professor Shimon Sakaguchi, of the University of Osaka, in Japan, has experienced mice that have removed their thymus to have them developed an autoimmune disease.

He showed that the injection of immune cells from other mice could prevent the disease – suggesting that there was a system to prevent immune cells from attacking the body.

Mary Brunkow, of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Fred Ramsdell now in Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, explored a hereditary autoimmune disease in mice and the people who led to the discovery of an important gene for the functioning of regulatory T cells.

Professor Annette Dolphin, president of the UK’s Physiological Society, said: “Their pioneering work revealed how the immune system is controlled by regulatory T cells, preventing it from mistaken the body’s own tissues.

“This work is a striking example of how fundamental physiological research can have large -scale implications for human health.”