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This year's prestigious award in medical science has been granted for revolutionary findings that clarify how the immune system attacks dangerous pathogens while protecting the healthy tissues.

Three esteemed scientists—from Japan Shimon Sakaguchi and American experts Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell—share this accolade.

The work identified specialized "sentinels" within the immune system that eliminate rogue immune cells capable of attacking the organism.

These discoveries are now paving the way for innovative therapies for immune disorders and malignancies.

The winners will divide a prize fund valued at 11 million SEK.

Crucial Discoveries

"The work has been decisive for comprehending how the immune system functions and the reason we do not all develop serious self-attack conditions," commented the chair of the award panel.

This team's studies address a core question: How does the immune system defend us from numerous infections while leaving our healthy cells intact?

Our body's protection system employs immune cells that search for signs of disease, even pathogens and germs it has not met before.

Such cells employ detectors—known as recognition units—that are generated by chance in a vast number of variations.

This provides the immune system the capacity to fight a broad range of invaders, but the randomness of the mechanism inevitably produces white blood cells that can attack the body.

Protectors of the Body

Scientists previously understood that some of these problematic defense cells were eliminated in the immune organ—where white blood cells mature.

The latest Nobel Prize honors the identification of regulatory T-cells—known as the immune system's "security guards"—which travel through the system to disarm any defenders that attack the body's own tissues.

We know that this process fails in autoimmune diseases such as type-1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and RA.

The prize committee added, "The findings have laid the foundation for a new field of research and accelerated the creation of innovative treatments, for instance for cancer and immune disorders."

In cancer, regulatory T-cells block the system from fighting the tumor, so studies are aimed at lowering their quantity.

In autoimmune diseases, trials are testing boosting T-reg cells so the organism is no longer under attack. A comparable approach could also be effective in minimizing the chances of organ transplant failure.

Innovative Experiments

Prof Shimon Sakaguchi, of Osaka University, performed tests on mice that had their thymus extracted, leading to self-attack conditions.

He demonstrated that injecting immune cells from other animals could stop the disease—implying there was a system for preventing defenders from attacking the host.

Mary Brunkow, from the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Dr. Ramsdell, now at a biotech firm in a California city, were studying an inherited immune disorder in rodents and humans that led to the identification of a gene vital for the way T-regs function.

"The pioneering work has revealed how the body's defenses is controlled by T-reg cells, preventing it from mistakenly targeting the body's own tissues," said a leading physiology expert.

"The research is a striking example of how fundamental biological research can have broad implications for public health."