2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine paves way for possible new cancer treatments

"American scientists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi from Japan won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for work shedding light on how the immune system spares healthy cells, creating openings for possible new autoimmune disease and cancer treatments. This year's prize relates to peripheral immune tolerance, or "how we keep our immune system under control so we can fight all imaginable microbes and still avoid autoimmune disease", said Marie Wahren-Herlenius, a rheumatology professor at the Karolinska Institute."

""Their discoveries have laid the foundation for a new field of research and spurred the development of new treatments, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases," the prize-awarding body said in a statement. The laureates identified so-called regulatory T cells, which act as the immune system's security guards that keep immune cells from attacking our own body, it added. After announcing the winners, the institute's Thomas Perlmann said specific therapies had yet to win market clearance but more than 200 trials on humans involving regulatory T cells were ongoing."

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine honored discoveries about peripheral immune tolerance and the identification of regulatory T cells that prevent immune attacks on the body's own tissues. Laureates Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi hold roles at the Institute for Systems Biology, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, and Osaka University, respectively. The prize includes 11 million Swedish crowns and a gold medal. Regulatory T cells function as immune "security guards," forming the basis for new research and therapeutic approaches. More than 200 human trials involving regulatory T cells are ongoing, although specific therapies have not yet gained market clearance. Industry collaborations include Sonoma Biotherapeutics' partnership with Regeneron.

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