How the Nobel discovery is used in drug development
Regulatory T cells keep the immune system in check, a discovery now awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Qiang Pan Hammarström explains how this finding is being applied in today’s drug development, and what challenges remain.
In 1995, Japanese researcher Shimon Sakaguchi made a key discovery in immunology. He identified a previously unknown class of immune cells that could protect the body against autoimmune diseases, cells that later became known as regulatory T cells, or Tregs.
Six years later, in 2001, American scientists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell published results explaining why a particular strain of mice was especially vulnerable to autoimmune disease. They found that the mice carried a mutation in a gene they named Foxp3. When the same mutation was later found in humans, it turned out to cause the severe condition known as IPEX.