Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi Win 2025 Nobel Prize for Immune Tolerance Breakthrough
Three scientists honored for revealing how the immune system protects the body from attacking itself a discovery decades in the making.
Stockholm, October 6 EST: The 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine went this morning to three scientists who figured out something most of us take for granted how the body knows not to destroy itself.
The winners, Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi, spent decades untangling how the immune system stays in balance. Their discoveries built the foundation for what scientists now call immune tolerance, the body’s built-in rule against friendly fire.
It’s not the kind of science that comes with fireworks. No single breakthrough, no sudden cure. Just slow, careful work experiments that didn’t always make sense at the time but, together, changed how doctors think about disease.
The Moment the Body Hit the Brakes
In the 1990s, Sakaguchi, working in Japan, found a group of immune cells that didn’t behave like the rest. Instead of attacking, they held the line calming other cells before they did too much damage. He called them regulatory T cells, or Tregs, and they turned out to be crucial for survival.
A few years later, on the other side of the Pacific, Brunkow and Ramsdell were studying children born with immune systems that went haywire. Their digging led to a single gene FoxP3 that seemed to control the Tregs’ identity. When FoxP3 fails, the immune system loses its brakes.
According to Reuters, linking those two discoveries “rewrote the logic of modern immunology.”
Science That Didn’t Fit the Trend
At first, not everyone believed it. Suppressor cells were an old idea that had fallen out of favor. Sakaguchi kept at it anyway. So did Brunkow and Ramsdell, who, by all accounts, spent years explaining why their data mattered to people who weren’t sure it did.
It’s the kind of persistence that defines real lab work long stretches of nothing, then one result that suddenly makes the last decade worth it.
The Guardian described their discoveries as “a quiet revolution.” That feels right. The science was quiet, but its effects reach nearly every field that touches immunity autoimmune disease, organ transplants, even cancer therapy.
Real-World Impact
Modern treatments now try to mimic what these scientists described. Some aim to strengthen Tregs in autoimmune disorders like type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis. Others look for ways to lower their influence in cancer, so the immune system can attack tumors more aggressively.
The Wall Street Journal noted that several biotech companies have built entire programs around FoxP3 research. It’s a story of patience paying off not in one blockbuster drug, but in a new way of thinking about balance inside the body.
Brunkow’s Long Road
For Mary Brunkow, the Nobel marks long-overdue recognition. Early in her career at Immunex in Seattle, her work often stayed behind the scenes detailed, essential, but rarely headline material. As The Times of India reported, her colleagues credit her quiet persistence for keeping the FoxP3 project alive when funding and attention were fading.
Fred Ramsdell, who later became a leading voice in clinical immunology, often said the goal wasn’t to make the immune system stronger it was to make it wiser. It’s the kind of line that sounds simple until you realize how much research sits behind it.
A Prize for Restraint
The Nobel Assembly praised their work for showing “how protection requires limits.” That’s not just a scientific lesson. In an era that celebrates breakthroughs and power, this award honors control, patience, and the decision not to attack.
The Economic Times called it “a discovery about peace within the body.” Hard to argue with that.
The three laureates will split 11 million Swedish kronor about one million dollars and receive their medals in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.
Sakaguchi, 74, is expected to attend. Brunkow and Ramsdell haven’t spoken publicly yet. People close to them say they’re taking it in quietly.
After all, that’s how this story started with three scientists paying attention to something small, something that didn’t shout. They found the body’s own form of restraint.
And now the world is finally listening.
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Trained in war zones, raised in Newark, and seasoned in city hall, Jordan blends grit reporting with deep integrity. From floods to finance bills, they’re always first on scene and last to leave.
