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This year's prestigious award in medical science was granted for transformative findings that illuminate how the immune system targets dangerous pathogens while sparing the healthy tissues.

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

Their research identified specialized "security guards" within the defense system that remove rogue defense cells that could harming the organism.

The discoveries are now enabling new therapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer.

The winners will divide a monetary award worth 11m SEK.

Decisive Findings

"Their research has been decisive for understanding how the body's defenses operates and the reason we don't all suffer from severe self-attack conditions," commented the head of the award panel.

The trio's research explain a core mystery: In what way does the defense system defend us from countless infections while leaving our healthy cells unharmed?

Our immune system uses immune cells that scan for indicators of disease, even viruses and bacteria it has not met before.

These defenders utilize detectors—called recognition units—that are produced by chance in countless combinations.

That provides the immune system the capacity to fight a broad range of threats, but the randomness of the process inevitably produces white blood cells that can target the body.

Protectors of the Body

Researchers previously knew that a portion of these harmful white blood cells were eliminated in the immune organ—where white blood cells mature.

This year's award recognizes the discovery of regulatory T-cells—described as the immune system's "peacekeepers"—which travel through the system to disarm any defenders that assault the healthy cells.

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

A prize committee stated, "These findings have laid the foundation for a novel area of research and accelerated the creation of new treatments, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases."

Regarding malignancies, T-regs prevent the body from fighting the tumor, so research are focused on reducing their numbers.

In autoimmune diseases, experiments are testing increasing T-reg cells so the body is no longer under attack. A comparable method could also be useful in minimizing the chances of transplanted organ rejection.

Pioneering Studies

Prof Shimon Sakaguchi, from a Japanese institution, conducted tests on rodents that had their thymus removed, leading to self-attack conditions.

The researcher showed that introducing defense cells from healthy animals could prevent the illness—implying there was a mechanism for preventing defenders from attacking the body.

Mary Brunkow, affiliated with the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Dr. Ramsdell, now at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in a California city, were studying an inherited immune disorder in rodents and humans that resulted in the identification of a gene critical for the way T-regs function.

"The pioneering work has uncovered how the immune system is controlled by T-reg cells, stopping it from mistakenly attacking the healthy cells," said a leading physiology specialist.

"This research is a striking example of how basic biological research can have broad implications for human health."