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Stockholm, Updated At : 05:56 PM Oct 06, 2025 IST

Mary E Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi are awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, October 6, 2025. TT News Agency/Claudio Bresciani via REUTERS

Nobel Prize in medicine goes to 3 scientists for work on human immune system

Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Dr Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.

Brunkow, 64, is a senior program manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle.

Ramsdell, 64, is a scientific adviser for Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco.

Sakaguchi, 74, is a distinguished professor at the Immunology Frontier Research Centre at Osaka University in Japan.

The immune system has many overlapping systems to detect and fight bacteria, viruses and other bad actors. Key immune warriors, such as T cells, get trained on how to spot bad actors. If some instead go awry in a way that might trigger autoimmune diseases, they're supposed to be eliminated in the thymus — a process called central tolerance.

The Nobel winners unravelled an additional way the body keeps the system in check.

The Nobel Committee said it started with Sakaguchi's discovery in 1995 of a previously unknown T cell subtype now known as regulatory T cells or T-regs.

Then, in 2001, Brunkow and Ramsdell discovered a culprit mutation in a gene named Foxp3, a gene that also plays a role in a rare human autoimmune disease.

The Nobel Committee said two years later, Sakaguchi linked the discoveries to show that the Foxp3 gene controls the development of those T-regs, which in turn act as a security guard to find and curb other forms of T cells that overreact.

The work opened a new field of immunology, said Karolinska Institute rheumatology professor Marie Wahren-Herlenius. Researchers around the world are now working to use regulatory T cells to develop treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer. “Their discoveries have been decisive for our understanding of how the immune system functions and why we do not all develop serious autoimmune diseases,” said Olle Kampe, chair of the Nobel Committee.

The award is the first of the 2025 Nobel Prize announcements and was announced by a panel at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Indian Navy commissions Anti-Submarine Warfare vessel 'Androth' in Vizag

The Indian Navy on Monday commissioned 'Androth', the second Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft during a ceremonial event at the Naval Dockyard here. According to the Navy, the induction of Androth will enhance its overall Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) capabilities, particularly for operations in coastal and shallow waters.

The event was presided over by Vice Admiral Rajesh Pendharkar, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command (ENC), in the presence of senior naval officers and shipyard representatives. Indigenously built by a Kolkata-based company, the vessel embodies India's growing shipbuilding prowess with over 80 per cent locally sourced components.

Asian push for carbon capture, storage could add 25 billion tonnes of emissions by 2050: Report

Asian countries' growing support for carbon capture and storage (CCS) to reduce fossil fuel emissions could result in nearly 25 billion tonnes of additional greenhouse gases by 2050, undermining the Paris Agreement and exposing their economies to risks, according to a new report released on Monday.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technology designed to trap carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from sources such as power plants and industrial facilities, prevent them from entering the atmosphere, and store them underground in geological formations.

The study by Climate Analytics, a global climate science and policy institute, assessed current and prospective CCS deployment in China, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, which together account for more than half of global fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions.

The report noted that India, a major producer of steel and cement, could increasingly turn to CCS in these hard-to-abate sectors. But cheaper and less risky options such as renewable energy, electrification and green hydrogen are already available to address industrial emissions.

India is already the world's second-largest steel consumer and is expected to see annual demand growth of 6.3 per cent between 2025 and 2030. Cement consumption in India and other South Asian countries could grow by more than 40 per cent during 2025-2035, the study said.

The report also warned that CCS projects worldwide have consistently underperformed, with capture rates often closer to 50 per cent rather than the 90-95 per cent claimed by industry. Deploying CCS in the power sector could also make electricity at least twice as costly as renewable energy backed by storage.

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Nobel Prize in medicine goes to 3 scientists for work on human immune system

Indian Navy commissions Anti-Submarine Warfare vessel 'Androth' in Vizag

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