00:00The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to three scientists on 6th of October 2025
00:04for a breakthrough discovery. Americans Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell and Japan's
00:10Shimon Sakaguchi, these three found out how our own immune system knows when not to attack us.
00:16It's a puzzle that has stumped experts for years. Our bodies rely on the immune system to stop
00:22dangerous invaders like viruses and bacteria. So the main fighters are special white blood cells
00:28called the T-cells. They are like the police force inside of our bodies, searching for trouble and
00:33clearing it out. But there is a catch. Sometimes those same T-cells go rogue. They start attacking
00:38perfectly healthy cells. That's when things go wrong. Illnesses like type 1 diabetes and lupus
00:45happen because the body's defenders get confused and strike against their own side. So what's
00:51stopping this from happening all the time? For years, scientists thought that the answer was
00:55a thymus. It's a small gland near the heart. T-cells are trained there, learning to tell
01:00friend from foe. Any T-cell that can attack healthy cells is supposed to get caught and destroyed in
01:06the thymus. Still, some slip through the net. And that's where this Nobel winning discovery comes in.
01:13Enter regulatory T-cells or T-rex. Think of them as the body's security guards. When regular T-cells
01:19start looking for trouble in the wrong places, these T-rex pull them back. Jonathan Fisher from
01:25University College London says they are like brakes for the immune system. They make sure that it
01:30doesn't go overboard. From among the three Nobel laureates is Sakaguchi, who was the first to see
01:35that there must be something outside the thymus, keeping T-cells in line. He ran experiments on mice
01:41and found that these extra T-cells called T-rex could stop autoimmune diseases. Brunkow and
01:47Ramsdell pushed the science even further. They discovered that a gene called FOXP3 controls these
01:53T-rex. If the gene is broken, diseases develop both in mice and humans. That's when things got
01:59really exciting for them. Scientists realized that this FOXP3 gene acts as a master switch for the
02:05security guard T-cells. When it's working, T-rex patrol the body and shield it from friendly fire.
02:10When it's broken, those same T-cells can cause serious health problems. Does this mean that new
02:16medicines are coming? Not quite yet. Over 200 clinical trials are underway trying to use T-rex to treat
02:22diseases and make organ transplants safer. There is a hope that these cells could change how we fight
02:29autoimmune illnesses like diabetes or prevent rejected organs. But so far, no drugs from the
02:35research are widely available. There is also a twist. Sometimes cancers can hijack T-rex,
02:41tricking the immune system into ignoring tumors. It's like a security guard getting fooled by a
02:47clever thief. Understanding this could open new doors for cancer therapy. Simon Sakaguchi says that
02:52he hopes the Nobel Prize will push the field toward treatments and cures people soon. Scientists warn that
02:59it will take time. Moving things from the lab to real-life medicine is always slow and expensive.
03:05But this discovery is a turning point. With T-regulators, now we know much more about
03:11how the body keeps itself safe.
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