This Monday (6), the Nobel Prize for Medicine 2025 It was granted to scientists Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell e Shimon Sakaguchi.
According to the organization, the trio was laureated by, who stimulated the development of new cancer treatments and autoimmune diseases.
Medical winners are selected by the Nobel Assembly of the Medical University of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and receive a prize of 11 million Swedish crowns ($ 1.2 million), as well as a gold medal awarded by the King of Sweden.
Get to know the Nobel Prize Winners
Mary E. Brunkow
- Born: 1961
- Affiliation at the time of the award: Institute of Systems Biology, Seattle, WA, USA
- PhD from Princeton University, Princeton, USA. Senior Program Manager at the Systems Biology Institute, Seattle, USA.
- Moment I received the news: “My phone rang and saw a number from Sweden and I thought, ‘Well, that’s all, you know, some kind of spam.’ So I turned off the phone and I went back to sleep, and then my husband was up there and heard a voice. He was talking to someone in the living room. It was someone on the front balcony.”
Fred Ramsdell
- Born: December 4, 1960, Elmhurst, Il, USA
- Affiliation at the time of the awards: Sonoma Biotherapeutics, San Francisco, Ca, USA
- PhD in 1987 from the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. Scientific Consultant, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, San Francisco, USA.
- Moment you received the news:
Shimon Sakaguchi
- Born: January 19, 1951, Nagahama, Shiga, Japan
- Affiliation at the time of the award: University of Osaka, Osaka, Japan
- Doctor in 1976 and doctor in 1983 from the University of Kyoto, Japan. Emeritus Professor at the Border Research Center in Immunology, Osaka University, Japan.
- The moment he received the news: “I had just returned from a conference at work and I received this surprise. So I’m very happy.”
Understand Discovery that won the Nobel Medicine 2025
The discovery of peripheral immune tolerance prevents the immune system from causing damage to the body, the study explains, published in the journal Nature.
The researchers were recognized by Identify regulatory T cellsone class of cells that act as guardians of the immune systemensuring the balance between defense and self -destruction. “Their findings were decisive for our understanding of how the immune system works and why not all we develop serious autoimmune diseases,” said Olle Kämpe, chairman of the Nobel Committee.
The first piece of this discovery arose in 1995, when Shimon Sakaguchi challenged the scientific consensus of the time by demonstrating that immune tolerance did not depend only on the thymus – an organ where the so -called central tolerance occurs – but also on a more complex mechanism. He then identified a new type of immune cell responsible for preventing the body from turning against himself.
In 2001, Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell expanded understanding of the phenomenon by investigating a mice lineage with high predisposition to autoimmune diseases. They found that vulnerability was due to a mutation in the gene Foxp3and revealed that changes in the same gene in humans cause a severe autoimmune condition, known as the syndrome Ipex.
Sakaguchi then connected the two discoveries, demonstrating that the Gene Foxp3 is responsible for the development of regulatory T cells described by him years before. These cells are those in charge of monitoring the rest of the immune system, ensuring that the body recognizes and tolerates its own tissues.
