SEATTLE — On Monday, a Seattle scientist, Mary Brunkow, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Her work, alongside two other scientists, led to a new branch of immunology research that has already led to new developments in treatment for cancers and autoimmune diseases.
Brunkow, who is a senior program manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, shares the prize with Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi. The three are credited with discovering peripheral immune tolerance, which describes how the immune system attacks pathogens, without attacking the body’s own cells.
In the ‘90s, Sakaguchi discovered what are called regulatory T cells, what the Nobel Committee called “the immune system’s security guards,” which protect the body from autoimmune diseases. These cells intervene when immune cells begin to attack the body’s own tissues.
In 2001, Brunkow and Ramsdell published a paper identifying a gene called Foxp3, which, when mutated, resulted in an autoimmune disease in male mice. Furthermore, they were able to connect this gene mutation in humans to IPEX syndrome, a rare autoimmune disease linked to the X chromosome.
Two years later, Sakaguchi was able to prove that the Foxp3 gene is what controls the development of regulatory T cells.
This chain of discoveries has spurred research into new medical treatments relating to how to suppress, or activate T-cells in different scenarios, including how the immune system responds to tumors and transplanted organs, and ways to treat autoimmune diseases at the cellular level.
“Through their revolutionary discoveries, Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi have provided fundamental knowledge of how the immune system is regulated and kept in check,” wrote the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine. “They have thus conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”
트위터 공유: 면역계 혁신으로 노벨상 수상