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This year's prestigious award in medical science has been granted for revolutionary findings that clarify how the body's defense network attacks harmful infections while protecting the healthy tissues.

Three renowned researchers—from Japan Shimon Sakaguchi and American experts Mary Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell—share this honor.

The work uncovered specialized "security guards" within the immune system that eliminate rogue defense cells that could harming the body.

These findings are now enabling new treatments for immune disorders and cancer.

These laureates will divide a monetary award valued at 11m Swedish kronor.

Decisive Findings

"The research has been essential for understanding how the body's defenses functions and why we do not all suffer from severe autoimmune diseases," commented the chair of the Nobel Committee.

The team's studies explain a core mystery: How does the immune system defend us from countless infections while keeping our healthy cells intact?

Our body's protection system uses white blood cells that scan for signs of infection, even pathogens and germs it has never encountered.

Such cells utilize detectors—called recognition units—that are generated by chance in countless variations.

That provides the immune system the ability to fight a wide array of threats, but the randomness of the process unavoidably produces white blood cells that can attack the body.

Protectors of the Body

Scientists previously knew that some of these problematic defense cells were destroyed in the immune organ—where white blood cells mature.

This year's Nobel Prize honors the discovery of regulatory T-cells—described as the immune system's "security guards"—which travel through the body to disarm any defenders that assault the healthy cells.

We know that this mechanism malfunctions in self-attack conditions such as type-1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and RA.

The prize committee added, "The discoveries have laid the foundation for a new field of investigation and accelerated the development of new treatments, for instance for cancer and immune disorders."

Regarding malignancies, regulatory T-cells prevent the system from attacking the tumor, so research are aimed at lowering their numbers.

In self-attack disorders, trials are exploring boosting regulatory T-cells so the body is no longer being harmed. A similar approach could also be effective in reducing the risks of organ transplant failure.

Innovative Studies

Professor Shimon Sakaguchi, from Osaka University, performed tests on rodents that had their immune gland extracted, leading to autoimmune disease.

He demonstrated that injecting immune cells from healthy mice could prevent the illness—implying there was a system for preventing immune cells from attacking the host.

Dr. Brunkow, from the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Dr. Ramsdell, now at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, were investigating an genetic autoimmune disease in rodents and humans that resulted in the identification of a genetic factor critical for the way T-regs operate.

"The groundbreaking work has revealed how the body's defenses is controlled by regulatory T cells, preventing it from accidentally targeting the body's own tissues," said a leading biological science specialist.

"The research is a remarkable example of how fundamental biological research can have broad implications for public health."