The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine 2025 was jointly assigned to Mary E. BRUNKOW (Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, USA), Fred Ramsdell (Sonoma Biotherapeutics, San Francisco, USA) and Shimon Sakaguchi (Osaka University, Osaka, Japan).
THE’Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet He conferred the prestigious recognition “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance”. These fundamental discoveries explain How our immune system is kept under controlpreventing you attacking our own organs.
Breaking News
The 2025 #NOBELPRIZE In Physiology or Medicine Has Been Awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi “For Their Discovery Concening Peripheral Immune Tolerance.” pic.twitter.com/nhjxjsozer– The Nobel Prize (@Nobelprize) Octaber 6, 2025
The “vigilantes” of the immune system
Every day, the immune system defends the body from thousands of different microbes, some of which are disguised by imitating human cells. The challenge is understand how the immune system can distinguish what must attack from what he has to defend.
The three winners identified the real system safety guards: Regular T cells. These cells prevent other immune cells from attacking the body itself.
“Their discoveries have been decisive for our understanding of how the immune system works and because not we all develop serious autoimmune diseases,” he said Olle Kämpipresident of the Nobel Committee.
The chronology of discoveries
The path that led to identify the mechanisms of peripheral tolerance developed in three key moments:
The discoveries of the three scientists started the field of peripheral tolerancepromoting the development of medical treatments for complex pathologies.
Implications for medicine
The results of their research are already in the clinical development phase and have significant implications in different areas of medicine:
The cash prize for 2025 It amounts to 11 million Swedish crowns (about 1.2 million dollars), which will be divided equally among the three winners.
