The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to three immunologists – Mary Brankow, a molecular biologist from the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle (USA), Fred Ramsdell, a scientific advisor at Sonoma Biotherapeutics (USA), and Shimon Sakaguchi, an immunologist from Osaka University (Japan).
They received the prestigious award for fundamental discoveries related to peripheral immune tolerance. These discoveries explain how we keep our immune system under control to fight all possible microbes while simultaneously avoiding autoimmune diseases. The laureates identified the body's "guardians" – regulatory T cells that prevent the immune system from attacking its own tissues.
How has this new discovery changed the understanding of immunity? And how has it influenced medicine?
This topic is covered in an article by science journalist Olena Zelenina «Nobel 2025. How the Discovery of Regulatory T Cells Stimulated the Development of Immunological Methods for Cancer and Autoimmune Disease Therapy» published in the online edition «Hromada.Group», prepared based on a conversation between academician of the NAS of Ukraine Volodymyr Seminozhenko and the head of the Department of Clinical Immunology and Allergology at Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University, corresponding member of the NAS of Ukraine Valentyna Chop’yak (program «About Science. Competently» on the YouTube channel of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine).