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In 2025, the Nobel Prize in Medicine will be awarded to Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi for research into the body’s defense system.
The researchers investigated the role of regulatory T cells and the Foxp3 gene in regulating the immune defense and preventing autoimmune diseases.
According to the Nobel Committee, the research can promote treatments for autoimmune diseases and the development of cancer and stem cell treatments.
Medical The Nobel Prize will be awarded in 2025 to three researchers who have investigated the functioning of the body’s defense system.
They are from the United States Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell and Japanese Shimon Sakaguchi.
Of THREE the studies are related to how the body’s immune system knows how not to react to the body’s own structures and harmless foreign structures.
Immune defense constantly protects the body from countless microbes that try to settle in a person.
However, the body must regulate its defense so that it does not start attacking the body itself and cause autoimmune diseases. Such are, for example rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune thyroiditis and type 1 diabetes.
A trio studies focus on the so-called immune system actors to regulatory T cells.
“The immune defense is uncontrollably strong. It can cause destruction if it is not controlled. Regulatory T-cells are the policemen of the immune defense, who tell when to stop the defense,” describes the assistant professor Eliisa Kekäläinen from the University of Helsinki.
Kekäläinen is an assistant professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, and he is currently researching regulatory T cells. Especially Sakaguchi’s work in discovering regulatory T cells is familiar.
“Regulatory T cells are born in the thymus, and if it is removed from a mouse right after birth, the mouse develops a severe autoimmune disease. Sakaguchi’s group was able to show that the regulatory T cells prevented this autoimmune disease, and from this we were able to trace the function of these cells,” says Kekäläinen.
Brunkow and Ramsdell, on the other hand, have studied the Foxp3 gene, which is related to autoimmune diseases. It was later shown in Sakaguchi’s studies to be important for the regulatory T cell. If the gene works, the regulator works.
Regulatory T cell is special in the sense that it looks like the real hard worker of the immune defense, i.e. a helper T cell. Its function is just drastically different, and work in, for example, the prevention of autoimmune diseases is central.
According to Kekäläinen, regulatory T cells have been studied feverishly for twenty years.
The promise of treatments for several autoimmune diseases has driven researchers, but treatments that directly modify or utilize regulatory T cells have not yet been obtained. However, according to Kekäläinen, there are many of these in a long development.
“Take, for example, the treatment of type 1 diabetes. Even if we get insulin-producing beta cells into the body, the improperly functioning immune defense remembers that they must be destroyed,” says Kekäläinen.
According to the Nobel Committee, the research of the award-winning trio can promote treatments for autoimmune diseases, as well as help develop cancer and stem cell treatments, estimates Bulletin of the Nobel Committee.
Medical the prize started the Nobel week. The physics awards will be announced on Tuesday and the chemistry awards on Wednesday. On Thursday, it’s the turn of the literature prize, and the week culminates with the announcement of the recipient of the peace prize.