Overview

• The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute named Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi co‑recipients for discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.
• Shimon Sakaguchi identified regulatory T cells in 1995, revealing a peripheral mechanism that restrains harmful immune responses outside the thymus.
• In 2001, Mary E. Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell pinpointed FOXP3 as essential to Treg function and linked its mutations to scurfy mice and the human autoimmune disorder IPEX.
• Follow‑up work in 2003 demonstrated that FOXP3 programs the development of regulatory T cells, unifying the cellular and genetic insights.
• The prize totals 11 million Swedish kronor to be shared equally, and the committee highlighted Treg‑based approaches now in clinical trials for autoimmune disease, cancer and transplantation.