00:00The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to three scientists on 6th October 2025 for a breakthrough
00:06discovery. Americans Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell and Japan's Shimon Sakaguchi, these three found
00:12out how our own immune system knows when not to attack us. It's a puzzle that has stumped experts
00:18for years. Our bodies rely on the immune system to stop dangerous invaders like viruses and bacteria.
00:25So the main fighters are a special white blood cells called the T cells. They are like the police
00:30force inside of our bodies, searching for trouble and clearing it out. But there is a catch, sometimes
00:35those same T cells go rogue, they start attacking perfectly healthy cells. That's when things go
00:42wrong. Illnesses like type 1 diabetes and lupus happen because the body's defenders get confused
00:48and strike against their own side. So what's stopping this from happening all the time?
00:53For years, scientists thought that the answer was the thymus. It's a small gland near the heart.
00:58T cells are trained there, learning to tell friend from foe. Any T cell that can attack healthy cells
01:04is supposed to get caught and destroyed in the thymus. Still, some slip through the net and that's
01:09where this Nobel winning discovery comes in. Enter regulatory T cells or Tregs. Think of them as the
01:16body's security guards. When regular T cells start looking for trouble in the wrong places,
01:22these Tregs pull them back. Jonathan Fisher from University College London says
01:27they are like brakes for the immune system. They make sure that it doesn't go overboard.
01:32From among the three Nobel laureates is Sakaguchi, who was the first to see that there must be
01:36something outside the thymus, keeping T cells in nine. He ran experiments on mice and found that these
01:42extra T cells called Tregs could stop autoimmune diseases. Brunkow and Ramstil pushed the science
01:49even further. They discovered that a gene called FOXP3 controls these Tregs. If the gene is broken,
01:55diseases develop both in mice and humans. That's when things got really exciting for them. Scientists
02:01realized that this FOXP3 gene acts as a master switch for the security guard T cells. When it's working,
02:07Tregs patrol the body and shield it from friendly fire. When it's broken, those same T cells can cause
02:13serious health problems. Does this mean that new medicines are coming? Not quite yet. Over 200
02:19clinical trials are underway trying to use Tregs to treat diseases and make organ transplants safer.
02:26There is a hope that these cells could change how we fight autoimmune illnesses like diabetes or prevent
02:32rejected organs. But so far, no drugs from this research are widely available. There is also a
02:37twist. Sometimes cancers can hijack Tregs, tricking the immune system into ignoring tumors. It's like a
02:44security guard getting fooled by a clever thief. Understanding this could open new doors for cancer
02:50therapy. Simon Sakaguchi says that he hopes the Nobel Prize will push the field toward treatments and cures
02:57people soon. Scientists warn that it will take time. Moving things from the lab to real-life medicine
03:03is always slow and expensive. But this discovery is a turning point. With Tregulators, now we know much
03:10more about how the body keeps itself safe.
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