Nobel Award Honors Groundbreaking Body's Defenses Research
The prestigious award in medical science has been granted for transformative discoveries that clarify how the immune system targets dangerous infections while protecting the healthy tissues.
A trio of renowned researchers—Japan's Shimon Sakaguchi and US experts Mary Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell—share this honor.
Their research identified unique "sentinels" within the immune system that eliminate malfunctioning immune cells capable of attacking the organism.
These findings are now enabling new therapies for immune disorders and malignancies.
These winners will share a monetary award valued at 11m SEK.
Crucial Findings
"The research has been decisive for understanding how the body's defenses operates and the reason we do not all suffer from serious autoimmune diseases," stated the chair of the award panel.
The trio's studies explain a fundamental mystery: In what way does the immune system defend us from numerous infections while keeping our healthy cells unharmed?
The body's protection system employs white blood cells that scan for indicators of infection, even pathogens and bacteria it has not met before.
These defenders employ sensors—known as receptors—that are generated randomly in a vast number of combinations.
This gives the immune system the ability to combat a broad range of threats, but the randomness of the process inevitably produces white blood cells that may attack the body.
Security Guards of the Immune System
Scientists earlier understood that some of these harmful defense cells were destroyed in the thymus—the site where immune cells develop.
The latest Nobel Prize honors the discovery of regulatory T-cells—known as the immune system's "security guards"—which patrol the body to neutralize other defenders that assault the healthy cells.
It is known that this mechanism fails in autoimmune diseases such as type-1 diabetes, MS, and rheumatoid arthritis.
A Nobel panel stated, "These findings have established a new field of investigation and spurred the development of innovative therapies, for instance for cancer and autoimmune diseases."
Regarding malignancies, T-regs block the system from fighting the growth, so studies are aimed at lowering their numbers.
In autoimmune diseases, trials are exploring boosting T-reg cells so the organism is no longer under attack. A similar method could also be useful in minimizing the risks of transplanted organ rejection.
Innovative Studies
Prof Sakaguchi, from a Japanese institution, conducted tests on mice that had their immune gland removed, leading to self-attack conditions.
The researcher demonstrated that introducing immune cells from other mice could stop the disease—implying there was a mechanism for blocking immune cells from harming the body.
Dr. Brunkow, affiliated with the a research center in a US city, and Dr. Ramsdell, now at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, were studying an inherited immune disorder in rodents and humans that resulted in the discovery of a genetic factor vital for the way regulatory T-cells function.
"The groundbreaking work has uncovered how the body's defenses is controlled by regulatory T cells, preventing it from accidentally targeting the body's own tissues," commented a leading biological science specialist.
"The work is a remarkable illustration of how basic physiological research can have broad implications for human health."
