The Nobel Prize in medicine goes to 3 scientists for work on peripheral immune tolerance [View all]

Source: AP

Updated 5:55 AM EDT, October 6, 2025


STOCKHOLM (AP) — Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.

Brunkow is a senior program manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. Ramsdell is a scientific adviser for Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco. Sakaguchi is a distinguished professor at the Immunology Frontier Research Center at Osaka University in Japan.

Peripheral immune tolerance is one way the body helps keep the immune system from getting out of whack and attacking its own tissues instead of foreign invaders. Their work dates back to 1995, when Sakaguchi made the first key discovery. Brunkow and Ramsdell made another breakthrough in 2001 and Sakaguchi linked all of their work two years later.

“The laureates’ discoveries launched the field of peripheral tolerance, spurring the development of medical treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases,” the Nobel Assembly said in a news release. “This may also lead to more successful transplantations. Several of these treatments are now undergoing clinical trials.”

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/nobel-prize-medicine-a68cf8a3b930570630168a949d277cde

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