STOCKHOLM: A US-Japanese trio on Monday 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 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 Osaka University, told a press conference in Japan he hoped the award would “serve as an opportunity for this field to develop further ... in a direction where it can be applied in actual bedside and clinical settings.”
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,” the secretary-general of the Nobel committee, Thomas Perlmann, joked at the press conference announcing the winners.
The three won the prize for research that identified the immune system’s “security guards,” called regulatory T-cells.
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.
