Japan’s Sakaguchi, 2 Others Win 2025 Nobel Medicine Prize

Tokyo, Oct. 6 (Jiji Press)–The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden said Monday that it has decided to award the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to three researchers, including Japan’s Shimon Sakaguchi, for their discoveries of regulatory T cells, which modulate the immune system. This came after the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, or Nihon Hidankyo, received last year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Including Sakaguchi, 29 Japanese individuals have won Nobel prizes, including those who acquired U.S. citizenship. Sakaguchi, 74, professor at Japan’s University of Osaka, is the sixth Japanese winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and the first since Kyoto University professor Tasuku Honjo, 83, who received it in 2018. Sakaguchi told a press conference Monday that he is happy and was surprised at his winning of the Nobel prize, expressing joy of his long years of basic research having been recognized. “I may have had some difficulties because research to suppress immune reactions was not popular, but there are people in the world who have the same idea, and we were able to receive the prize on their behalf,” he said. The two other researchers who won this year’s award with Sakaguchi are Mary Brunkow of the Institute for Systems Biology of the United States and Fred Ramsdell of U.S. biotechnology company Sonoma Biotherapeutics. The award ceremony will be held in Stockholm on Dec.10, and the three winners will split the prize money of 11 million Swedish krona. Humans have an immune system that protects the body from viruses, bacteria and other invading pathogens. Immune cells, such as T cells, attack pathogens or mutated cancer cells. Autoimmune diseases are caused when such cells start to function excessively and attack normal cells and tissues as “foreign” objects. Sakaguchi believed that there were cells that could regulate immune response, and that using such cells could suppress autoimmune diseases. Although Sakaguchi released the results of his research in 1985, his findings received very little recognition at the time. Sakaguchi in 1995 discovered a marker for regulatory T cells, and Brunkow and Ramsdell in 2001 discovered a key gene in cells of mice. As this was later discovered in humans, regulatory T cells became a major research topic in the world of immunology. Research is currently underway to manipulate regulatory T cells and apply them to the treatment of immune and other diseases. Researchers are also attempting to establish therapies, including increasing such cells’ ability to attack cancer cells by reversing the immune suppression function and reducing transplant rejection. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]