Skip to main content

Nobel medicine prize goes to researchers into immune system precision

American scientists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi from Japan won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for work shedding light on how the immune system spares healthy cells, creating openings for possible new autoimmune disease and cancer treatments.

This year’s prize relates to peripheral immune tolerance, or “how we keep our immune system under control so we can fight all imaginable microbes and still avoid autoimmune disease”, said Marie Wahren-Herlenius, a rheumatology professor at the Karolinska Institute.

Sakaguchi told reporters outside his university laboratory that “I feel it is a tremendous honour,” Kyodo news agency reported.

Regulatory T cells: the immune system’s ‘security guards’

The winners for medicine are selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university and receive a prize sum of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million), as well as a gold medal presented by Sweden’s king.

Brunkow is senior programme manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, while Ramsdell is scientific adviser at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco. Sakaguchi is a professor at Osaka University in Japan.

“Their discoveries have laid the foundation for a new field of research and spurred the development of new treatments, for example, for cancer and autoimmune diseases,” the prize-awarding body said in a statement.

The laureates identified so-called regulatory T cells, which act as the immune system’s security guards that keep immune cells from attacking our own body, it added.

After announcing the winners, the institute’s Thomas Perlmann said specific therapies had yet to win market clearance, but more than 200 trials on humans involving regulatory T cells were ongoing.

Among companies in the early race, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, which Ramsdell co-founded, is partly funded and supported by US drugmaker Regeneron REGN.O to work on therapies against diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease.

Also targeting that condition, Quell Therapeutics has partnered with AstraZeneca AZN.L. Other biotech firms exploring the approach include Bayer’s BAYGn.DEBlueRock.

Medicine the first prize of Nobel season

The Nobel Prizes were established through the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and a wealthy businessman. They have been awarded since 1901 for outstanding contributions in science, literature, and peace, with interruptions mainly during the World Wars.

The economics prize was added later and is funded by Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank.

Winners are selected by expert committees from various institutions. All prizes are awarded in Stockholm, except for the Peace Prize, which is presented in Oslo — a possible legacy of the political union between Sweden and Norway during Nobel’s lifetime.

Past recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine include renowned scientists such as Alexander Fleming, who shared the 1945 award for discovering penicillin. In recent years, the prize has recognised major breakthroughs, including those that enabled the development of Covid-19 vaccines.

Last year’s medicine prize was awarded to US scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA and its key role in how multicellular organisms grow and live, helping explain how cells specialise into different types.

Medicine, in accordance with tradition, kicks off the annual Nobels, arguably the most prestigious prizes in science, literature, peace and economics, with the remainder set to be announced over the coming days.

More than a century after their inception, the Nobel Prizes remain steeped in tradition. The awards culminate in ceremonies attended by the royal families of Sweden and Norway, followed by lavish banquets held on December 10 — the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.



from Dawn - Home https://ift.tt/QYcHpCA
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ministers rubbish notion that proposed retirement age extension to favour ‘one particular institution’

Information Minister Attaullah Tarar on Tuesday rubbished the notion that a proposed extension in the retirement age was to favour “one particular institution”, adding that the move would be implemented across the board if approved. The rebuttal comes in the wake of media reports claiming that the government was mulling changes to the Constitution to fix the tenure of the chief justice . Currently, judges of the Supreme Court, including the chief justice, retire after attaining the age of superannuation, i.e. 65 years, as stipulated in Article 179 of the Constitution. While giving his opinion recently on the reports of the constitutional amendment, Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar had said he “will not vehemently turn down the proposals related to the tenure of the chief justice”. Addressing the issue during a press conference in Islamabad today along since Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb and the law minister, Attaullah said the extension in the retirement age was “a proposal to a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Republican primary race for president in 2024

The Republican primary race for president in 2024 is already shaping up to be a competitive one. There are a number of high-profile candidates who have already announced their intention to run, and more are expected to join the field in the coming months. The frontrunner for the nomination is former President Donald Trump. Trump has been teasing a 2024 run for months, and he has a large and loyal following among Republican voters. However, he is also a polarizing figure, and his candidacy could alienate some moderate Republicans. Another potential contender for the nomination is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis has been praised by many conservatives for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and his opposition to vaccine mandates. He is also seen as a rising star in the Republican Party. Other potential candidates include former Vice President Mike Pence, former Ambassador Nikki Haley, and Senator Tim Scott. Pence is a more traditional Republican who could appeal to moderate vote...
1 comment
Read more

In pictures: Grief in Gaza and the loss of a child

In the photo, the woman cradles a child in her arms, balanced on her knee. It is an image that resonates, as ancient as human history. But in a grim inversion of the familiar, we see that the child she holds close is a corpse, wrapped in a shroud. It is a quiet moment of intense grief. The woman wears a headscarf and her head is bowed. We cannot see who she is nor can we learn anything about the child — not even if it is a boy or girl. Palestinian woman Inas Abu Maamar, 36, embraces the body of her 5-year-old niece Saly, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 17, 2023. The child is one of many who have lost their lives on both sides in the Israel-Hamas war. Most have names we will never know, whose deaths will spark a lifetime of grief for family members we will never meet. In the 21st century, an average of almost 20 children a day have been killed or maimed in wars around the world, according to Unicef. Reuter...
Post a Comment
Read more