Nobel Prize Honors Groundbreaking Immune System Discoveries
This year's Nobel Prize in medical science has been awarded for revolutionary discoveries that illuminate how the body's defense network attacks harmful pathogens while protecting the healthy tissues.
Three renowned scientists—Japan's Prof. Sakaguchi and American experts Dr. Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell—received this honor.
Their research identified specialized "sentinels" within the defense system that eliminate malfunctioning defense cells that could harming the body.
The findings are now enabling innovative treatments for immune disorders and cancer.
These winners will divide a prize fund worth 11 million Swedish kronor.
Crucial Discoveries
"The research has been essential for understanding how the body's defenses functions and the reason we do not all suffer from severe autoimmune diseases," commented the head of the Nobel Committee.
The trio's research explain a fundamental mystery: In what way does the defense system protect us from numerous invaders while leaving our own tissues unharmed?
Our immune system uses immune cells that scan for signs of disease, including pathogens and germs it has never encountered.
Such cells employ sensors—known as receptors—that are produced randomly in a vast number of variations.
That provides the immune system the capacity to fight a broad range of invaders, but the unpredictability of the mechanism unavoidably creates immune cells that can target the body.
Protectors of the Immune System
Scientists earlier understood that some of these harmful defense cells were destroyed in the immune organ—the site where white blood cells mature.
This year's Nobel Prize honors the discovery of T-reg cells—described as the immune system's "security guards"—which travel through the body to neutralize any immune cells that assault the body's own tissues.
We know that this mechanism fails in self-attack conditions such as juvenile diabetes, MS, and rheumatoid arthritis.
A Nobel panel added, "The findings have established a novel area of investigation and spurred the creation of new treatments, for instance for cancer and autoimmune diseases."
In cancer, T-regs prevent the body from fighting the growth, so studies are focused on reducing their numbers.
In self-attack disorders, experiments are testing boosting regulatory T-cells so the body is no longer being harmed. A similar approach could also be useful in minimizing the chances of organ transplant rejection.
Innovative Studies
Professor Sakaguchi, of a Japanese institution, conducted tests on rodents that had their immune gland removed, leading to autoimmune disease.
The researcher demonstrated that injecting immune cells from other mice could stop the illness—implying there was a mechanism for blocking defenders from harming the host.
Dr. Brunkow, affiliated with the a research center in Seattle, and Dr. Ramsdell, currently at a biotech firm in a California city, were investigating an inherited autoimmune disease in mice and people that led to the discovery of a genetic factor vital for the way regulatory T-cells function.
"Their groundbreaking research has revealed how the body's defenses is kept in check by regulatory T cells, stopping it from accidentally targeting the body's own tissues," commented a leading physiology expert.
"This work is a remarkable example of how basic biological study can have far-reaching consequences for public health."