A US-Japanese trio yesterday won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for research into how the immune system is kept in check by identifying its “security guards,” the Nobel jury said.
The discoveries by Mary E. Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell of the US and Japan’s Shimon Sakaguchi have been decisive for understanding how the immune system functions and why we do not all develop serious autoimmune diseases.
Sakaguchi, a professor at the Immunology Frontier Research Center in Osaka, told Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Radio: “It’s an honor for me. I’m looking forward to visiting Stockholm in December” to receive the award in person.
Photo: AFP
However, the Nobel committee was unable to reach the two US-based laureates to break the news to them in person.
“If you hear this, call me,” Nobel Assembly secretary-general Thomas Perlmann joked at the news conference announcing the winners.
The three won the prize for research that identified the immune system’s “security guards,” called regulatory T-cells.
Photo: AFP
Their work concerns “peripheral immune tolerance” that prevents the immune system from harming the body, and has led to a new field of research and the development of potential medical treatments now being evaluated in clinical trials.
“The hope is to be able to treat or cure autoimmune diseases, provide more effective cancer treatments and prevent serious complications after stem cell transplants,” the jury said.
Sakaguchi made the first key discovery in 1995. At the time, many researchers were convinced that immune tolerance only developed due to potentially harmful immune cells being eliminated in the thymus, through a process called “central tolerance.” Sakaguchi, 74, showed that the immune system is more complex and discovered a previously unknown class of immune cells, which protect the body from autoimmune diseases.
Brunkow, born in 1961 and a senior project manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Ramsdell, a 64-year-old senior adviser at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, made the other key discovery in 2001, when they were able to explain why certain mice were particularly vulnerable to autoimmune diseases.
“They had discovered that mice have a mutation in a gene that they named Foxp3,” the jury said. “They also showed that mutations in the human equivalent of this gene cause a serious autoimmune disease, IPEX.”
Two years later, Sakaguchi was able to link these discoveries.
The trio are to receive their prize — a diploma, a gold medal and US$1.2 million split three ways — at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10.
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