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This year's Nobel Prize in medical science was granted for transformative findings that illuminate how the immune system attacks harmful infections while sparing the body's own cells.

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

Their research uncovered unique "security guards" within the defense system that eliminate malfunctioning immune cells that could attacking the body.

The findings are now enabling innovative therapies for immune disorders and cancer.

The laureates will share a prize fund valued at 11m Swedish kronor.

Decisive Discoveries

"The work has been essential for understanding how the body's defenses functions and why we do not all develop severe self-attack conditions," stated the head of the award panel.

The trio's research address a core question: How does the defense system defend us from countless infections while leaving our healthy cells intact?

Our body's protection system uses white blood cells that scan for indicators of disease, including viruses and germs it has never encountered.

Such defenders employ sensors—called receptors—that are generated by chance in countless variations.

That provides the defense network the ability to fight a wide array of invaders, but the unpredictability of the mechanism inevitably creates white blood cells that may target the body.

Security Guards of the Immune System

Researchers earlier understood that some of these harmful white blood cells were destroyed in the thymus—the site where immune cells mature.

This year's award honors the identification of regulatory T-cells—described as the body's "peacekeepers"—which travel through the system to disarm any defenders that attack the healthy cells.

It is known that this process malfunctions in self-attack conditions such as type-1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

A Nobel panel stated, "These discoveries have laid the foundation for a novel area of research and spurred the development of new therapies, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases."

Regarding malignancies, regulatory T-cells block the body from attacking the tumor, so research are focused on reducing their numbers.

In self-attack disorders, experiments are testing increasing regulatory T-cells so the body is not being harmed. A comparable method could also be effective in minimizing the chances of organ transplant failure.

Innovative Studies

Professor Sakaguchi, from Osaka University, performed tests on mice that had their immune gland extracted, causing self-attack conditions.

The researcher demonstrated that injecting immune cells from other mice could stop the disease—implying there was a mechanism for preventing defenders from harming the body.

Dr. Brunkow, affiliated with the Institute for Systems Biology in a US city, and Fred Ramsdell, currently at a biotech firm in a California city, were investigating an inherited immune disorder in rodents and humans that led to the discovery of a genetic factor critical for how regulatory T-cells function.

"The groundbreaking research has revealed how the body's defenses is controlled by regulatory T cells, stopping it from mistakenly attacking the healthy cells," said a leading biological science expert.

"The research is a remarkable illustration of how fundamental biological study can have broad consequences for public health."