Nobel Prize Unlocks Secret to Immune System Control: Peripheral Immune Tolerance and Regulatory T cells
- Oct 7
- 2 min read
The medical community is celebrating a monumental achievement as the Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi for their pivotal discoveries concerning Peripheral Immune Tolerance. This trio's work details the immune system’s own mechanisms to keep itself in check and prevent the disastrous “self-attack” that characterizes autoimmune diseases.
The award, announced by a panel at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, recognizes how these scientists unraveled an additional, essential way the body controls its immune responses, supplementing the initial training (central tolerance) T cells receive in the thymus. Brunkow, 64, Ramsdell, 64, and Sakaguchi, 74, will share the prize money of 11 million Swedish kronor (nearly $1.2 million).
The groundbreaking path began in 1995 with Dr. Sakaguchi, a distinguished professor at Osaka University in Japan, who discovered a previously unknown T cell subtype now recognized as Regulatory T cells or T-regs.
The next crucial piece of the puzzle arrived in 2001, when Brunkow (a senior program manager at the Institute for Systems Biology) and Ramsdell (a scientific adviser for Sonoma Biotherapeutics) discovered a culprit mutation in a gene named Foxp3. Working together at a small biotech company, Brunkow and Ramsdell investigated why a particular strain of mice suffered from an over-active immune system. They quickly realized the significance of the Foxp3 gene alteration—it caused a “massive change to how the immune system works”—and recognized its potential role in human health, including a rare human autoimmune disease.
Just two years later, Sakaguchi successfully linked these findings, demonstrating that the Foxp3 gene controls the development of those critical T-regs. These T-regs, in turn, act as vital “security guards,” locating and curbing other forms of T cells that might otherwise overreact and attack the body’s own tissues.
According to Olle Kämpe, chair of the Nobel Committee, these discoveries “have been decisive for our understanding of how the immune system functions and why we do not all develop serious Autoimmune Diseases”. This work has profoundly impacted immunology research, opening a new field where scientists around the world are now striving to use Regulatory T cells to develop specific treatments for autoimmune diseases and even cancer.
Dr. Sakaguchi expressed his hope that this renewed focus would ensure research further progresses so that their findings can be used directly in treatment. Mary E. Brunkow, who initially thought the Nobel call from Sweden was “spam,” called the award a “nice surprise”. The announcement of the 2025 Nobel Prizes continues this week with physics on Tuesday.
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