Nobel Prize 2025: How Immune “Security Guards” Stop Autoimmune Disease
A Breakthrough in Immune Self-Control In a landmark recognition for immunology, the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to three scientists who unlocked how the immune system keeps itself from going rogue. Mary E. Brunkow (Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle), Fred Ramsdell (Sonoma Biotherapeutics, San Francisco), and Shimon Sakaguchi (Osaka University, Japan) earned the prize “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance that prevents the immune system from harming the body” nobelprize.org. In essence, they found the body’s own “off-switch”: a mechanism that stops immune cells from attacking healthy tissues. Their work solved a medical mystery