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This year's prestigious award in medical science was awarded for transformative findings that clarify how the body's defense network attacks harmful pathogens while protecting the healthy tissues.

Three esteemed researchers—Japan's Prof. Sakaguchi and US experts Dr. Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell—received this honor.

Their research identified unique "sentinels" within the defense system that eliminate rogue defense cells capable of attacking the organism.

These findings are now enabling innovative therapies for immune disorders and cancer.

These laureates will divide a monetary award worth 11m Swedish kronor.

Crucial Discoveries

"Their research has been decisive for understanding how the immune system functions and the reason we don't all develop severe self-attack conditions," commented the head of the award panel.

The team's research explain a fundamental question: In what way does the immune system protect us from numerous invaders while keeping our healthy cells unharmed?

Our immune system uses white blood cells that search for indicators of infection, including viruses and bacteria it has never encountered.

Such defenders utilize sensors—known as recognition units—that are generated randomly in a vast number of variations.

That gives the defense network the capacity to fight a broad range of threats, but the randomness of the process unavoidably produces immune cells that may attack the host.

Security Guards of the Body

Scientists earlier understood that some of these problematic white blood cells were destroyed in the thymus—where white blood cells mature.

This year's Nobel Prize honors the discovery of regulatory T-cells—described as the body's "peacekeepers"—which patrol the system to neutralize any immune cells that assault the healthy cells.

It is known that this process malfunctions in self-attack conditions such as juvenile diabetes, MS, and rheumatoid arthritis.

The Nobel panel added, "The discoveries have laid the foundation for a new field of investigation and accelerated the development of innovative treatments, for instance for cancer and immune disorders."

In malignancies, T-regs block the system from attacking the growth, so studies are focused on reducing their quantity.

For autoimmune diseases, experiments are testing increasing T-reg cells so the body is not being harmed. A comparable approach could also be effective in minimizing the risks of transplanted organ rejection.

Innovative Studies

Professor Shimon Sakaguchi, of Osaka University, conducted tests on rodents that had their thymus extracted, causing autoimmune disease.

The researcher demonstrated that introducing defense cells from healthy mice could stop the disease—implying there was a system for preventing defenders from harming the body.

Mary Brunkow, affiliated with the Institute for Systems Biology in a US city, and Dr. Ramsdell, now at a biotech firm in a California city, were studying an inherited autoimmune disease in mice and humans that resulted in the identification of a gene critical for the way regulatory T-cells function.

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

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