Nobel prize for medicine goes to trio for work on immune tolerance

The Nobel Prize in the field of physiology or medicine 2025 went to three researchers – Mary BrancoIN Fred Ramsdell And Simon Sakaguchi – Who has discovered the key type of immune cell, which helps to stop the immune system, attacking independently.

“This unleashed a completely new area in immunology,” said Marie Varen Herlenius At the Karolinskaya Institute in Sweden.

Immune cells, called T -cells, play a key role in immunity, capturing the retention of invasive viruses and bacteria through receptors on their surface. New types of T -cells are generated throughout our lives.

Sometimes receptors on recently generated T cells restrain our own proteins instead of viral or bacterial, which can cause states such as type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.

The body has a system for screening of self-reactive T cells, and recently formed, traveling to Timus for testing. This has long been considered the only way in which independent T cells are eliminated.

But in 1995, Sakaguchi, currently at the University of Osaka in Japan, showed in the experiments of the mice that some other cells circulating in the bloodstream should also somehow somehow protect against auto-reactive T cells. If the Timus of the mice is removed after birth, I found Sakaguti, the animals develop autoimmune conditions. But if T -cells from healthy mice are injected into them, this is prevented. His team found that the specific T -cells responsible for this have a protein called CD25 on their surface, and call them regulatory T -cells CD25.

Meanwhile, Brancoou, at present, at the Institute of System Biology in Seattle, Washington, and Ramsdell, adviser to Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, California, studied a strain of mice, which is especially likely to get autoimmune conditions. In 2001, Branco and Ramsdell found that these mice have a mutation in a genus on a chromosome called Foxp3Field

People with mutations in this genome are also especially likely that they receive an autoimmune disease from a state known as IPEX syndrome. In 2003, Sakaguchi showed that these two discoveries are connected – Foxp3 Gene plays a key role in the development of regulatory cells CD25 that his team discovered. According to Wahren-Herlenius, many researchers were skeptical of the earlier statements by Sakaguchi. But the work of Brankov and Ramsdell won the case.

The opening of regulatory T -cells can lead to better treatment for a wide range of conditions. On the one hand, an increase in the number of regulatory T -cells can help suppress autoimmune reactions that cause states such as type 1 diabetes. On the other hand, a decrease in the number of regulatory T -cells can increase the immune response against cancer. A number of clinical trials are currently underway.

“Their discoveries were decisive for our understanding of how the immune system is functioning and why not everyone is developing serious autoimmune diseases.” Olle KempChairman of the Nobel Committee, said in statementField