US EditionUniversity of Washington Alum Mary Brunkow Awarded Nobel Prize
The 2025 Nobel Prize honors the discovery of regulatory T cells that prevent autoimmune diseases and enable novel cancer therapies, with laureates sharing an 11 million Swedish kronor award.
- This year the Nobel Committee awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Shimon Sakaguchi, Mary E. Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell, who will share the 11 million Swedish kronor prize.
- Researchers identified regulatory T cells as a special class controlling the immune system's attack versus tolerance, explaining why many avoid severe autoimmune disease.
- Laboratory work revealed both functional and genetic proof: Sakaguchi showed removing these cells in laboratory animals caused autoimmune attacks, while Brunkow and Ramsdell identified the Foxp3 gene as the genetic switch linked to IPEX disease.
- Clinical trials are testing therapies that expand regulatory T cells to treat arthritis, diabetes and improve transplant tolerance, and treatments inspired by these discoveries are reshaping modern immunology.
- Researchers are now trying to fine-tune the brakes, which can shield cancers from attack, so medicine can boost them for autoimmunity or ease them, signalling precision immunotherapy.
13 Articles
13 Articles
‘Man of Belief’: Japanese Nobel Prize Winner Sakaguchi Pursues Research Despite Skepticism from Peers
“A man of belief.” This is how many of his fellow researchers describe Shimon Sakaguchi, one of the three winners of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Sakaguchi has continued his research, despite people saying it likely will not lead to anything.
Nobel medicine prize: how a hidden army in your body keeps you alive – and could help treat cancer
Regulatory T cells monitor other immune cells and ensure that our immune system tolerates our own tissues. © The Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine. Ill. Mattias Karlén, CC BY-NCThe 2025 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine celebrates a discovery that answers one of medicine’s most profound questions: how does the immune system know when to attack, and when to stand down? Most of the time, our defences target dangerous infections and ev…
On October 6, the Nobel Prize winners in Physiology and Medicine were announced in Stockholm, and Mary Brankov, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi were awarded the award "for research on peripheral immunological tolerance", and the Division of Labor explains how the scientific basis for the current Nobel discoveries has been developed, why the metaphor of black and white lists helps to understand the immunological revolution, and which other sci…
This Nobel Prize-Awarded Trio Discovered The Immune System's Gatekeepers
Three scientists have been awarded the 2025 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for discovering how the body stops its own immune system from turning against itself. Shimon Sakaguchi from Osaka University in Japan, Mary E. Brunkow from the Institute for System Biology and Fred Ramsdell from Sonoma Biotherapeutics, both in the USA, identified specialised “security guard” cells that keep our immune system in check. These discoveries have been im…
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