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This year's Nobel Prize in medical science was awarded for revolutionary discoveries that illuminate how the immune system targets harmful pathogens while protecting the body's own cells.

A trio of esteemed researchers—from Japan Prof. Sakaguchi and American scientists Dr. Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell—share this honor.

The work identified specialized "security guards" within the defense system that remove malfunctioning immune cells capable of attacking the organism.

These findings are now enabling innovative treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer.

The laureates will share a monetary award worth 11m SEK.

Decisive Findings

"The work has been essential for understanding how the body's defenses functions and the reason we do not all develop severe self-attack conditions," stated the chair of the Nobel Committee.

This team's research explain a core question: How does the defense system protect us from numerous invaders while keeping our healthy cells unharmed?

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

Such cells employ detectors—called receptors—that are generated randomly in a vast number of combinations.

This gives the immune system the capacity to combat a broad range of threats, but the randomness of the mechanism inevitably creates white blood cells that may target the body.

Security Guards of the Body

Scientists earlier understood that some of these harmful defense cells were destroyed in the thymus—the site where immune cells mature.

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

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

The prize committee stated, "The findings have established a new field of research and spurred the development of innovative treatments, for example for tumors and immune disorders."

In cancer, regulatory T-cells prevent the body from attacking the tumor, so studies are focused on reducing their numbers.

In self-attack disorders, experiments are exploring increasing regulatory T-cells so the body is no longer being harmed. A comparable approach could also be effective in minimizing the risks of organ transplant rejection.

Pioneering Studies

Prof Sakaguchi, of a Japanese institution, conducted tests on mice that had their thymus removed, leading to autoimmune disease.

He demonstrated that introducing immune cells from healthy animals could stop the illness—implying there was a system for blocking defenders from harming the host.

Mary Brunkow, from the Institute for Systems Biology in a US city, and Fred Ramsdell, now at a biotech firm in San Francisco, were studying an inherited immune disorder in mice and humans that led to the discovery of a genetic factor vital for how T-regs operate.

"The groundbreaking work has uncovered how the immune system is kept in check by T-reg cells, preventing it from mistakenly targeting the body's own tissues," commented a leading biological science specialist.

"The work is a remarkable illustration of how basic physiological study can have far-reaching implications for human health."