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The prestigious award in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded for transformative discoveries that illuminate how the immune system attacks dangerous pathogens while protecting the healthy tissues.

Three esteemed researchers—Japan's Shimon Sakaguchi and American experts Mary Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell—received this accolade.

Their research uncovered specialized "sentinels" within the immune system that remove malfunctioning defense cells capable of attacking the organism.

The findings are now enabling new therapies for immune disorders and malignancies.

The laureates will share a prize fund worth 11m Swedish kronor.

Decisive Findings

"The research has been decisive for comprehending how the body's defenses operates and why we don't all develop serious self-attack conditions," stated the chair of the Nobel Committee.

This team's research address a fundamental question: In what way does the immune system protect us from countless infections while leaving our own tissues intact?

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

Such cells employ detectors—known as recognition units—that are produced randomly in a vast number of combinations.

That gives the defense network the capacity to fight a wide array of invaders, but the randomness of the process inevitably produces white blood cells that may target the body.

Security Guards of the Immune System

Researchers previously knew that some of these harmful white blood cells were eliminated in the thymus—where white blood cells mature.

The latest Nobel Prize honors the identification of T-reg cells—described as the body's "security guards"—which travel through the body to disarm any immune cells that attack the healthy cells.

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

The Nobel panel added, "The findings have laid the foundation for a novel area of research and spurred the development of innovative treatments, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases."

In cancer, T-regs block the body from fighting the tumor, so research are focused on lowering their numbers.

In self-attack disorders, experiments are testing boosting regulatory T-cells so the body is no longer under attack. A comparable approach could also be useful in minimizing the chances of organ transplant rejection.

Innovative Experiments

Professor Shimon Sakaguchi, from Osaka University, performed experiments on rodents that had their immune gland extracted, causing autoimmune disease.

The researcher showed that injecting immune cells from other animals could stop the illness—suggesting there was a mechanism for preventing defenders from harming the body.

Mary Brunkow, from the a research center in a US city, and Dr. Ramsdell, now at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in a California city, were studying an genetic autoimmune disease in rodents and people that resulted in the identification of a gene critical for the way T-regs function.

"Their groundbreaking research has revealed how the immune system is controlled by regulatory T cells, preventing it from accidentally targeting the healthy cells," commented a prominent biological science expert.

"This work is a striking example of how basic biological research can have far-reaching implications for human health."