nobel prize in medicine 2025

 

THIS years nobel prize in medicine was awarded to researchers – for their discoveries regarding the role of regulatory T cells in keeping the immune system in check. Faulty regulatory T cells can result in autoimmune disease.  There has been considerable interest in this system from drugmakers.

In the 1980s Sakaguchi removed the thymus from three-day-old mice, who then developed autoimmune disease.  He injected them with mature T cells developed in genetically identical mice and found that the T cells protected the mice from autoimmune disease.

In 1995 he showed that regulatory T cells carried CD4 and CD25 proteins on their surface.

Brunkow and Ramsdell mapped the x chromosome in detail and found a faulty mouse gene that caused an auto immune disease in the mice and two years later Sakaguchi proved that the Foxp3 gene controls the development of regulatory T cells.   Julia Robinson chemistry world. 

Two years later Sakaguchi, followed by others, proved that the Foxp3 gene controls the development of regulatory T cells.   The protein it causes the cell to make, the FOXP3 protein.  It acts as a transcription factor by binding to DNA and controlling the activity of other genes.  It is a master regulator for the development and function of Tregs, which are a type of T cell that helps maintain immune tolerance.  By controlling Tregs, FOXP3 helps prevent the immune system from overreacting and mistakenly attacking healthy tissues, thus preventing autoimmune diseases.   AI

NY TIMES GINA KOLATA. OCTOBER 7.  THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR MEDICINE WAS GIVEN TO researchers who learned about a class of T cells.  We know a lot about T cells, white blood cells that fight infection in the body. These researchers identified a class of special T cells, regulatory T cells, and the genes that control them.

Researchers removed the thymus from mice three days after the animals were born and the immune system went wild, attacking organs., Dr. Sakaguchi discovered that the thymus did not stop every harmful cell from escaping into the circulation.

But, he learned that the thymus would have fixed that problem if it had not been removed so soon. The immune system, he discovered, has a backup system, a set of immune cells that stop mistaken attacks. It involved a new class of T cells, which he called regulatory T cells. Those mice whose thymuses were removed after three days had not had a chance to develop the regulatory T cells.

Dr. Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell, working at what was then a British-owned biotechnology company outside Seattle, Celltech Chiroscience, studied a strain of mice that developed a horrible autoimmune disease. After years of arduous work, the two researchers found the gene, called FOX3  It resembled others that control other genes.

Without FOXP3, regulatory T cells do not form. The body does not make T cells that tell other T cells that can attack the body’s cells not to respond. 

Theoretically Cancers block attacks from the immune system by attracting a thicket of regulatory T cells. With the FOXP3 gene identified, and its role understood, researchers can hopefully develop drugs to turn the immune system against these cancer cells.

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