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This year's Nobel Prize in medical science was awarded for transformative discoveries that clarify how the body's defense network targets dangerous infections while sparing the healthy tissues.

Three renowned scientists—from Japan Prof. Sakaguchi and American scientists Dr. Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell—share this accolade.

Their research identified unique "sentinels" within the immune system that remove malfunctioning immune cells capable of attacking the body.

The findings are now enabling innovative treatments for autoimmune diseases and malignancies.

The winners will share a prize fund valued at 11 million Swedish kronor.

Crucial Findings

"Their work has been essential for understanding how the body's defenses functions and the reason we don't all develop serious self-attack conditions," stated the head of the Nobel Committee.

This team's research explain a fundamental question: How does the immune system defend us from countless invaders while keeping our healthy cells intact?

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

These defenders utilize sensors—called receptors—that are produced by chance in countless variations.

That gives the immune system the capacity to fight a wide array of invaders, but the unpredictability of the mechanism unavoidably creates immune cells that may attack the host.

Security Guards of the Body

Researchers previously understood that a portion of these problematic white blood cells were destroyed in the immune organ—where immune cells mature.

The latest award honors the discovery of regulatory T-cells—known as the immune system's "security guards"—which patrol the body to disarm other defenders that attack the healthy cells.

We know that this mechanism malfunctions in autoimmune diseases such as type-1 diabetes, MS, and RA.

The Nobel panel added, "The findings have established a novel area of research and accelerated the creation of innovative treatments, for example for tumors and autoimmune diseases."

In malignancies, regulatory T-cells block the body from attacking the growth, so studies are focused on reducing their quantity.

For self-attack disorders, experiments are testing boosting regulatory T-cells so the organism is no longer under attack. A similar method could also be useful in reducing the risks of organ transplant failure.

Pioneering Studies

Professor Sakaguchi, from a Japanese institution, conducted experiments on mice that had their thymus removed, leading to autoimmune disease.

The researcher showed that injecting defense cells from healthy mice could prevent the illness—suggesting there was a system for preventing defenders from harming the body.

Mary Brunkow, affiliated with the a research center in a US city, and Fred Ramsdell, now at a biotech firm in San Francisco, were studying an genetic autoimmune disease in mice and humans that led to the identification of a gene critical for how T-regs function.

"The groundbreaking work has uncovered how the body's defenses is kept in check by regulatory T cells, stopping it from accidentally attacking the healthy cells," commented a leading physiology expert.

"This work is a striking example of how fundamental biological study can have broad implications for human health."