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This year's Nobel Prize in medical science has been awarded for transformative discoveries that clarify how the immune system targets harmful pathogens while protecting the healthy tissues.

Three renowned researchers—Japan's Prof. Sakaguchi and American experts Dr. Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell—share this honor.

The work identified specialized "sentinels" within the defense system that remove rogue defense cells capable of attacking the body.

The discoveries are now paving the way for new treatments for autoimmune diseases and malignancies.

These laureates will divide a prize fund valued at 11m SEK.

Decisive Findings

"Their research has been decisive for comprehending how the body's defenses operates and the reason we don't all develop serious self-attack conditions," commented the head of the award panel.

This team's research address a fundamental mystery: How does the defense system protect us from numerous invaders while leaving our own tissues intact?

The body's protection system employs white blood cells that search for indicators of disease, including viruses and bacteria it has not met before.

Such cells employ sensors—called receptors—that are produced randomly in countless combinations.

That provides the immune system the ability to combat a wide array of threats, but the unpredictability of the process unavoidably creates immune cells that can attack the body.

Protectors of the Immune System

Scientists earlier knew that a portion of these harmful defense cells were eliminated in the thymus—the site where white blood cells develop.

This year's award honors the identification of T-reg cells—described as the immune system's "security guards"—which travel through the body to neutralize other immune cells that assault the healthy cells.

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

The prize committee added, "These findings have established a new field of research and spurred the development of innovative treatments, for instance for tumors and autoimmune diseases."

In malignancies, T-regs block the system from fighting the tumor, so studies are focused on lowering their numbers.

In self-attack disorders, experiments are testing boosting T-reg cells so the organism is no longer being harmed. A similar approach could also be effective in minimizing the risks of transplanted organ rejection.

Innovative Studies

Professor Sakaguchi, of a Japanese institution, conducted tests on mice that had their thymus extracted, causing self-attack conditions.

The researcher showed that injecting defense cells from other animals could stop the disease—suggesting there was a mechanism for blocking defenders from harming the body.

Mary Brunkow, from the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Fred Ramsdell, currently at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in a California city, were studying an inherited autoimmune disease in rodents and people that led to the discovery of a gene critical for how regulatory T-cells function.

"The pioneering work has uncovered how the immune system is kept in check by regulatory T cells, preventing it from mistakenly targeting the healthy cells," said a prominent biological science specialist.

"The work is a remarkable illustration of how basic biological study can have broad implications for human health."