The Nobel for physiology or medicine 2025 rewards the three scientists “for their discoveries on peripheral immune tolerance”.
Mary E. Britkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize for physiology or Medicine 2025 for “for their discoveries on peripheral immune tolerance” which prevent the immune system damaging the human body. The three scientists have been rewarded for identifying the “safety guards” of the immune system – the regulatory T (Treg) cell cells, which were decisive to understand how the immune system works and because we do not develop all autoimmune diseases.
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Nobel for physiology or medicine: some historical curiosities
The Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine, established by the Testament of Alfred Nobel in 1895, is awarded by a jury of medical professors of the Karolinska Instittet, a Swedish medical university. The nobel for physiology or medicine is given to the authors of discoveries of vital importance, which have changed the previous scientific paradigm and that are of enormous benefit for mankind. In 2024, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun was given to the discovery of the microna, a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in the regulation of genes.
From 1901 to today 115 Nobel prizes have been awarded in this field: 40 to a single winner scientist, 36 shared by two scientists and 39 shared between three (the maximum number of winners possible). The youngest scientist ever rewarded remains Frederick G. Banding: he was 31 years old when, in 1923, he was awarded the Nobel for the discovery of insulin. The oldest is – for now – Peyton Rous, who had 87 when, in 1966, he was awarded for the discovery of viruses that induce tumors.
Only 13 out of 229 total people, women awarded so far: one of these is the Italian Rita Levi-Montalcini, who in 1986 won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for the identification of the first growth factor, together with the American biochemist Stanley Cohen (Read the story of how Levi-Montalcini arrived at the Nobel). In this restricted group, the US biologist Barbara McClinTock was the only one who won a Nobel Prize for Medicine not shared with others: in 1983 it was rewarded for discovered the existence of the transposons, portions of DNA capable of moving from one chromosome to another.
