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The prestigious award in Physiology or Medicine has been granted for revolutionary findings that clarify how the immune system attacks dangerous infections while sparing the body's own cells.

A trio of renowned researchers—Japan's Shimon Sakaguchi and US scientists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell—received this accolade.

The work uncovered specialized "sentinels" within the immune system that remove rogue immune cells that could harming the organism.

The findings are now paving the way for innovative therapies for immune disorders and malignancies.

These winners will share a prize fund valued at 11 million SEK.

Crucial Discoveries

"The research has been decisive for comprehending how the immune system functions and why we do not all suffer from serious self-attack conditions," stated the head of the Nobel Committee.

The trio's research address a fundamental mystery: In what way does the immune system protect us from countless invaders while keeping our healthy cells unharmed?

Our immune system employs white blood cells that search for indicators of infection, even viruses and germs it has never encountered.

These cells utilize detectors—called recognition units—that are generated randomly in a vast number of combinations.

This provides the defense network the ability to fight a wide array of threats, but the randomness of the mechanism inevitably creates white blood cells that may attack the body.

Security Guards of the Body

Researchers previously knew that a portion of these harmful defense cells were eliminated in the immune organ—where immune cells mature.

The latest award honors the discovery of regulatory T-cells—described as the immune system's "security guards"—which patrol the body to disarm any defenders that assault the body's own tissues.

We know that this mechanism fails in autoimmune diseases such as juvenile diabetes, MS, and RA.

The Nobel panel added, "These discoveries have laid the foundation for a new field of investigation and accelerated the creation of new treatments, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases."

Regarding cancer, T-regs prevent the body from fighting the growth, so studies are aimed at reducing their numbers.

For self-attack disorders, experiments are exploring increasing regulatory T-cells so the organism is not being harmed. A comparable method could also be useful in reducing the chances of organ transplant failure.

Innovative Studies

Prof Shimon Sakaguchi, of Osaka University, conducted tests on mice that had their immune gland extracted, causing autoimmune disease.

He demonstrated that injecting defense cells from other animals could stop the disease—suggesting there was a mechanism for preventing defenders from harming the host.

Dr. Brunkow, from the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Dr. Ramsdell, now at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, were investigating an genetic autoimmune disease in rodents and humans that led to the identification of a genetic factor vital for the way regulatory T-cells operate.

"Their groundbreaking work has uncovered how the body's defenses is controlled by T-reg cells, stopping it from accidentally attacking the body's own tissues," commented a leading physiology specialist.

"The research is a remarkable illustration of how basic biological study can have broad implications for public health."