Nobel Prize Recognizes Groundbreaking Body's Defenses Discoveries
This year's prestigious award in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded for transformative findings that illuminate how the body's defense network targets dangerous pathogens while sparing the body's own cells.
A trio of esteemed researchers—Japan's Shimon Sakaguchi and American experts Dr. Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell—share this honor.
Their work identified unique "sentinels" within the immune system that remove rogue immune cells that could attacking the organism.
These discoveries are now enabling new treatments for immune disorders and malignancies.
The winners will share a prize fund worth 11 million Swedish kronor.
Crucial Discoveries
"Their work has been essential for understanding how the body's defenses operates and the reason we do not all develop serious autoimmune diseases," commented the chair of the Nobel Committee.
The trio's studies address a fundamental question: In what way does the immune system defend us from numerous invaders while keeping our healthy cells intact?
Our body's protection system employs immune cells that scan for signs of disease, even pathogens and bacteria it has not met before.
Such defenders employ detectors—called receptors—that are produced randomly in a vast number of variations.
This provides the defense network the ability to combat a wide array of invaders, but the unpredictability of the mechanism unavoidably creates white blood cells that may target the body.
Security Guards of the Body
Researchers earlier knew that some of these harmful white blood cells were eliminated in the immune organ—where immune cells mature.
The latest Nobel Prize recognizes the discovery of T-reg cells—described as the immune system's "peacekeepers"—which patrol the body to neutralize other defenders that attack the healthy cells.
We know that this process malfunctions in autoimmune diseases such as juvenile diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis.
A prize committee added, "These findings have laid the foundation for a new field of research and accelerated the creation of innovative therapies, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases."
Regarding malignancies, regulatory T-cells block the system from attacking the growth, so research are focused on lowering their quantity.
For self-attack disorders, experiments are exploring boosting T-reg cells so the body is no longer under attack. A similar method could also be effective in minimizing the risks of transplanted organ rejection.
Pioneering Studies
Prof Sakaguchi, from Osaka University, performed experiments on rodents that had their immune gland extracted, leading to self-attack conditions.
The researcher showed that injecting defense cells from healthy animals could stop the disease—suggesting there was a system for preventing immune cells from harming the body.
Dr. Brunkow, from the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Dr. Ramsdell, now at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, were investigating an genetic immune disorder in rodents and humans that led to the discovery of a gene vital for the way regulatory T-cells function.
"The groundbreaking research has revealed how the immune system is controlled by T-reg cells, preventing it from accidentally attacking the healthy cells," commented a leading physiology expert.
"The research is a striking example of how fundamental physiological research can have broad implications for public health."
