10/06/2025
The 2025 medicine laureates identified the immune system’s security guards, regulatory T cells, which prevent immune cells from attacking our own body.
The fundamental knowledge that researchers have gained through the discovery of regulatory T cells and their importance for peripheral immune tolerance, has spurred the development of potential new medical treatments. Mapping of tumours shows that they can attract large numbers of regulatory T cells that protect them from the immune system. Researchers are therefore trying to find ways to dismantle this wall of regulatory T cells, so the immune system can access the tumours.
In autoimmune diseases, researchers are instead trying to promote the formation of more regulatory T cells. In pilot studies, they are giving patients interleukin-2, a substance that makes regulatory T cells thrive. Researchers are also investigating whether interleukin-2 can be used to prevent organs being rejected after transplantation.
Another strategy researchers are testing to slow an overactive immune system is to isolate regulatory T cells from a patient and multiply them in a laboratory. These are then returned to the patient, who will thus have more regulatory T cells in their body. In some cases, researchers also modify the T cells, putting antibodies on their surface that function like an address label. This allows researchers to send these cellular security guards to a transplanted liver or kidney, for example, and protect the organ from being attacked by the immune system.
There are many more examples of how researchers are testing how regulatory T cells can be used to combat diseases. Through their revolutionary discoveries, Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi have provided fundamental knowledge of how the immune system is regulated and kept in check. They have thus conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.”
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