Medicine Nobel to the Trio, which identified the “bodyguards” of the immune system

On Monday, the US-Japanese trio won the Nobel Prize in the field of medicine for research on how the immune system is controlled by identifying “bodyguards”, said the Nobelo jury.

The discoveries of Mary E. Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell from the United States and Japan Shimon Sakaguchi decide to understand how the immune system works and why not all of them develop serious autoimmune diseases.

Sakaguchi, a professor at the Immunology Frontier research center in Osaka, said the Swedish sender Sveriges Radio: “It’s an honor for me. I can’t wait to visit Stockholm in December” to personally receive the prize.

However, the Nobel Protection Committee was unable to reach two American winners to personally convey the message to them.

“If you hear it, call me,” joked the head of the Nobel Congregation Thomas Perlmann, joked at a press conference, announcing the winners.

All three won the award for research, which identified the “bodyguards” of the immune system, called T. regulatory cells

Their work concerns “peripheral immune tolerance”, which prevents damage to the immune system, and has led to a new field of research and development of potential treatment methods currently assessed in clinical trials.

“We hope that you can treat or treat autoimmune diseases, ensure more effective cancer treatment and prevent serious complications after stem cell transplantation,” said the jury.

Sakaguchi made the first key discovery in 1995.

At that time, many researchers were convinced that immune tolerance developed only because of the potentially harmful immune cells eliminated in the thymus, through a process called “central tolerance”.

74 -year -old Sakaguchi showed that the immune system is more complex and discovered an previously unknown class of immune cells that protect the body against autoimmune diseases.

Brunkow, born in 1961 and senior project manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and Ramsdell, a 64-year-old senior adviser at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, made a second key discovery in 2001, when they were able to explain why some mice were particularly susceptible to autoimmune diseases.

“They discovered that mice have a mutation in the gene, which they called Foxp3,” said the jury.

“They also showed that mutations in the human balance of this gene cause a serious autoimmune disease, Ipex.”

Two years later, Sakaguchi was able to combine these discoveries.

The trio will receive a prize – diploma, gold medal and $ 1.2 million divided into three ways – during a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.

Scientists from the main American institutions usually dominate the Nobel Prize rewards, mainly due to long -lasting investments in the USA in basic sciences and academic freedoms.

But this can change the line after huge budget cuts in the USA to scientific programs announced by President Donald Trump.

According to the Independent National Institutes of Health (NIH) database, the American National Institutes of Health (Nih) has completed 2,300 research subsidies worth about $ 9.5 billion and $ 2.6 billion of contracts.

Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the committee, which rewards the Nobel Prize for Medicine, told AFP that “it is not by accident that the United States has by far the most nobel laureate.”

“But now there is a creeping sense of uncertainty about the US desire to maintain a leading position in research,” he said.

Meanwhile, Trump did not hide the fact that he wanted to win Nobel – a peace prize.

Nobel experts, however, said that his policy of “America” ​​and the division style give him little chance.

“This is completely unthinkable,” said AFP Oeivind Stenersen, a historian who conducted research and wrote a book about prizes together.

“(Trump) is in many respects the opposite of ideals that the Nobel Prize represents,” he said, citing “multilateral cooperation” as an example.

Trump “follows his own path, unilaterally,” added Stenersen.

Sudan Volunteer networks In emergency, rescue reacting rooms (ERR) help people survive war and hunger – they are perceived this year as a potential candidate, just like the supervisory body of the media committee to protect journalists, reporters without borders and yulia navalaya, widow of the Kremlin criticism of Alexei.