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This year's prestigious award in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded for transformative discoveries that clarify how the body's defense network attacks harmful infections while protecting the body's own cells.

A trio of esteemed researchers—from Japan Shimon Sakaguchi and US scientists Mary Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell—received this honor.

Their research uncovered unique "security guards" within the defense system that eliminate rogue immune cells that could harming the organism.

The findings are now enabling new treatments for immune disorders and malignancies.

The laureates will share a prize fund worth 11 million Swedish kronor.

Decisive Discoveries

"Their research has been essential for understanding how the immune system operates and the reason we do not all develop severe self-attack conditions," commented the chair of the award panel.

The team's research explain a fundamental mystery: In what way does the defense system protect us from countless invaders while keeping our healthy cells intact?

Our immune system employs immune cells that scan for indicators of disease, even pathogens and germs it has never encountered.

These cells employ sensors—known as receptors—that are generated randomly in a vast number of variations.

This provides the immune system the ability to fight a wide array of threats, but the randomness of the mechanism unavoidably produces white blood cells that may target the body.

Security Guards of the Body

Scientists earlier knew that some of these harmful defense cells were destroyed in the thymus—where white blood cells develop.

The latest Nobel Prize honors the discovery of regulatory T-cells—described as the body's "peacekeepers"—which patrol the body to neutralize any immune cells that attack the body's own tissues.

It is known that this mechanism fails in autoimmune diseases such as type-1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and RA.

The Nobel panel added, "These findings have laid the foundation for a new field of investigation and accelerated the development of innovative therapies, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases."

Regarding malignancies, regulatory T-cells prevent the body from attacking the growth, so research are aimed at reducing their quantity.

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

Pioneering Experiments

Professor Sakaguchi, from Osaka University, conducted tests on mice that had their thymus removed, causing self-attack conditions.

He showed that introducing defense cells from healthy mice could stop the disease—implying there was a mechanism for preventing immune cells from harming the body.

Mary Brunkow, from the a research center in Seattle, and Fred Ramsdell, now at a biotech firm in San Francisco, were studying an genetic autoimmune disease in mice and people that resulted in the identification of a genetic factor vital for the way T-regs function.

"The groundbreaking research has uncovered how the body's defenses is kept in check by T-reg cells, stopping it from accidentally targeting the body's own tissues," said a leading biological science expert.

"This work is a striking example of how basic biological study can have far-reaching implications for public health."