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The prestigious award in medical science has been granted for revolutionary discoveries that clarify how the immune system targets harmful pathogens while protecting the body's own cells.

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

Their work identified specialized "security guards" within the immune system that remove rogue defense cells that could attacking the body.

The findings are now paving the way for new therapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer.

The winners will divide a prize fund worth 11m Swedish kronor.

Decisive Findings

"The work has been essential for understanding how the body's defenses functions and why we do not all develop serious self-attack conditions," commented the head of the award panel.

This team's research address a core mystery: How does the defense system defend us from numerous infections while keeping our healthy cells unharmed?

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

Such defenders employ detectors—called recognition units—that are generated randomly in a vast number of variations.

That gives the immune system the capacity to fight a wide array of invaders, but the randomness of the mechanism inevitably creates immune cells that may attack the body.

Protectors of the Immune System

Scientists previously knew that some of these harmful defense cells were eliminated in the immune organ—where immune cells mature.

The latest Nobel Prize honors the identification of T-reg cells—known as the immune system's "security guards"—which patrol the body to disarm other defenders that assault the body's own tissues.

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

A prize committee added, "These discoveries have established a novel area of investigation and spurred the development of innovative therapies, for instance for cancer and autoimmune diseases."

Regarding malignancies, T-regs prevent the body from attacking the tumor, so studies are aimed at reducing their numbers.

For autoimmune diseases, experiments are exploring increasing regulatory T-cells so the organism is not under attack. A similar method could also be useful in minimizing the chances of organ transplant rejection.

Innovative Experiments

Professor Shimon Sakaguchi, from a Japanese institution, conducted tests on rodents that had their thymus removed, causing autoimmune disease.

The researcher demonstrated that introducing defense cells from other mice could stop the disease—implying there was a system for blocking defenders from attacking the body.

Mary Brunkow, from the a research center in Seattle, and Fred Ramsdell, now at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, were investigating an genetic immune disorder in rodents and people that resulted in the discovery of a gene critical for the way T-regs operate.

"The groundbreaking work has uncovered how the immune system is kept in check by regulatory T cells, preventing it from mistakenly attacking the body's own tissues," said a leading biological science expert.

"The research is a striking illustration of how fundamental physiological study can have broad implications for public health."