News: The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine honored discoveries on peripheral immune tolerance by Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi.
About Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025
- Winners
- Mary E. Brunkow — from United States
- Fred Ramsdell — from United States
- Shimon Sakaguchi — from Japan
- Work: The Medicine Nobel 2025 recognizes work that explained how the body prevents immune cells from attacking its own tissues.
- The discovery identified regulatory T cells as the immune system’s “security guards” that maintain peripheral immune tolerance.
- This finding clarified why most people do not develop serious autoimmune diseases and opened new paths for therapy.
Key Discoveries by Winners
- Shimon Sakaguchi:
- In 1995, he showed that immune tolerance is not only central tolerance and discovered a previously unknown class of immune cells that protect against autoimmune diseases.
- In 2003, he proved that the Foxp3 gene governs the development of these cells, now known as regulatory T cells, which monitor other immune cells and ensure tolerance to our own tissues.
- Mary E. Brunkow : In 2001, she presented the explanation for why a specific mouse strain was vulnerable to autoimmune diseases and discovered that the mice have a mutation in a gene they named Foxp3.
- Fred Ramsdell : In 2001, he showed that mutations in the human equivalent of the Foxp3 gene cause a serious autoimmune disease, IPEX.
Significance
- Understanding the immune system: These discoveries clarified how peripheral immune tolerance works in addition to central tolerance.
- Autoimmune diseases: The laureates identified regulatory T cells and showed that the Foxp3 gene governs their development.
- This explained how the body prevents immune cells from attacking its own tissues and clarified that mutations in the human FOXP3 gene cause the severe autoimmune disease IPEX.
- Cancer treatments: Their work launched the field of peripheral tolerance and opened new paths for medical treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases.
- Transplantation: The discoveries may also lead to more successful transplantations.
