Locator: 49298NOBEL.
Another connection with Stanford. At the end of the day, bragging rights to universities and entrepreneurs on the west coast (San Diego, Stanford, Seattle).
Looking forward to the book!
Incredibly: the folks who worked on a sub-set of T-cells win a Nobel prize, but Jacques Miller and Graham Mitchell did not win a Nobel Prize for their co-discovery of T-cells and B-cells. What this tells me: advances in medicine and physiology were amazing in the 1970s.
My hunch: research in virology and immunizations was where the excitement was.
I count twelve years in which Nobel Prizes in medicine and physiology were won for virology research and immunization research between 1946 and 2023. But the co-discoverers of the thymus, T-cells and B-cells were not so honored!
T-cells. Wiki.
Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for their discoveries of peripheral immune tolerance — the system that explains how the immune system prevents rogue cells from attacking tissues and organs. [The "Dr" in front of Sakuguchi's name is because he does have an MD degree; the other two were PhDs. Dr Sakkuguchi was a PhD.
- Dr. Shimon Sakaguch: Osaka University
- Celltech Chiroscience, a British-owned biotechnology, Seattle area
- Mary E Brunkow: Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle
- Fred Ramsell: Sonoma Bio, a biotechnology company based in San Francisco
The three researchers will split a prize of 11 million Swedish kroner, or around $1.17 million.
The Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine said that the scientists received the award for their work researching the human immune system. Their research showed how the body regulates its immune responses, and keeps the immune system from attacking itself.
Central to the scientists’ research was understanding more about T-cells, the cells in the body’s immune system that fight infection. The researchers identified so-called regulatory T-cells, which ensure that the body’s normal T-cells don’t start attacking healthy cells.
This is truly incredibly. Every physician in retirement today started medical school with little knowledge about T-cells (and of the entire immune system, may be the easiest to understand):
Their research spans three decades, and began with Dr. Sakaguchi’s experiments with mice in 1995, when he discovered a previously unknown set of immune cells that protected the body against autoimmune diseases.
In 2001, Dr. Brunkow and Dr. Ramsdell discovered gene mutations that lead to autoimmune diseases, and a dysfunction in T-cell responses. Two years later, Dr. Sakaguchi linked their findings to his.
Yet to come:
- Physics: tomorrow
- Chemistry: Wednesday
- Literature: Thursday
- Peace Prize: Friday
- next week: economic sciences
