On October 6, Swedish Caroline School of Medicine announced the awarding of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to scientist Mary E. Brunkow.FredFred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi.

The three winners made breakthrough discoveries in the mechanisms of outer-circular immune tolerance that prevent the immune system from attacking bodies.

Researchers have long believed that immune cells mature through the process of "central immune tolerance", which removes T cells in the thymus that recognize their own tissue.

However, this year¡¯s winners discovered the more complex side of the immune system, identifying the immune system¡¯s ¡°safe guardians¡± ¨C regulatory T cells, thus revealing the mechanisms of peripheral immune tolerance.

Three scientists were awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their contributions to the research on outer immunological tolerance.

Three scientists

Won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

On October 6 local time, the Caroline School of Medicine announced that the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine will be awarded to scientists Mary E. Blanco, Fred Ramsdale and Sagan Schumann in recognition of their research contributions in the field of outer immunity tolerance.

Mary E. Blanco, born in 1961, received a Ph.D. (Molecular Biology Direction) degree at Princeton University in 1991, with research in the intersection of biomedicine, immunology and system biology.

Born in 1960, Fred Ramsdale is active not only in the field of basic research but also in the biotechnology industry, promoting the development of immunological-related therapies, dedicated to transforming the foundational findings of immunology into intervention strategies that can be used to treat autoimmune diseases, cancers, or immunosuppression.

Shifumi Sakaguchi, born in 1951, is a professor at the Immune Frontier Research Center of Osaka University, Japan. His pioneering work in the field of immune regulation has won many international and domestic awards.

According to a press release issued by official website, the Nobel Prize Committee, every day, the human body's immune system protects us from thousands of microorganisms that try to invade. These microorganisms have different shapes, and many of them have evolved similar appearances to human cells as camouflage.

So how does the immune system decide what to attack and what to protect? The three winners identified regulatory T cells, the "safety guardians" of the immune system, which prevent immune cells from attacking our own bodies.

Their research also further discovered the "master switch" gene-Foxp3-that controls the development and function of these key cells. The discovery explains the key question of why the body's immune system does not attack itself.

As Ole Kemp, chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee, said: "Their findings are decisive for our understanding of how the immune system works and why not all of us develop serious autoimmune diseases."

Multiple related therapies

in clinical trials.

It is understood that one of the prize winners, Sakaguchi, made the first key discovery in 1995, contrary to the mainstream view at the time. At the time, many researchers were firmly convinced that immunological tolerance was achieved simply by removing potentially harmful immune cells in the chest.

Sakamoto Zhivong proved that the immune system is more complex, and he discovered a class of previously unknown immune cells that can protect the body from autoimmune diseases.

An abnormal experimental observation strengthened Shifumi Sakaguchi's belief: when the thymus of newborn mice was removed, their immune system not only did not weaken, but fell out of control, causing a variety of serious autoimmune diseases. This convinced him that the thymus not only produces "warrior" T cells, but also some kind of "guard" cells to maintain order.

After more than ten years of work, Shifumi Sakaguchi published a landmark paper. Through a well-designed experiment, he proved that a small number of T cells with two proteins, CD4 and CD25, on their surfaces are the key to immune suppression. When he removed the cells from healthy mice, the mice developed severe autoimmune diseases; when he transplanted the cells back into the sick mice, the disease was prevented. He found the "security guard" and named it "regulatory T cells." However, despite the conclusive evidence, this discovery was still widely questioned by the scientific community at the time.

During the same period in the United States, Blanco and Ramsdale were working to find drug targets for autoimmune diseases. Their attention was attracted by an experimental mouse called ¡°scurfy.¡± This mouse, due to a gene defect on the X chromosome, caused T cells to grow out of control and attack their own organs. The two realized that this might be the perfect model for studying human autoimmune diseases. They inferred that if the mutant gene that caused the disease could be found, it would provide a decisive insight into understanding the cause of the disease.

Scientists narrowed the location of the mutation to an area on the mouse X chromosome containing approximately half a million DNA base pairs. In that region, they identified 20 potential genes.

In 2001, they published this major discovery and named this previously unknown gene Foxp3. The key is that they linked the discovery to a rare human genetic disease, the IPEX syndrome. Eventually, they confirmed that it was a mutation in the human Foxp3 gene that led to the IPEX syndrome. They found a critical genetic ¡°switch¡± that regulates the immune system.

These two great findings are like two halves of a complete answer. Shiwen Sakaguchi found the cell, but he didn't know the instructions behind it; Brenko and Ramsdell found a "switch" gene, but they didn't fully understand its exact role. In 2003, Shifumi Sakaguchi linked these two separate findings.

He demonstrated that the Foxp3 gene discovered by Branco and Ramsdale dominated the regulatory T cells he discovered in 1995. While the regulatory T cells are responsible for monitoring other immune cells and ensuring the body¡¯s immune system tolerates its own tissue, a complete immune regulatory mechanism has been demonstrated: The Foxp3 geneins extracurricular immune tolerance by controlling the production of regulatory T cells.

"Their discoveries laid the foundation for new areas of research and promoted the development of new therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases, for example," the Nobel Prize committee said in a statement. This series of discoveries has opened up research in the field of peripheral tolerance and opened up new avenues for the treatment of multiple diseases.

For example, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. in autoimmune diseases can enhance the function of regulatory T cells, which may regulate improper immune responses; in organ transplantation, by manipulating regulatory T cells, it is possible to reduce transplant rejection and improve transplant survival; in cancer treatment, moderate inhibition of regulatory T cell function may enhance anti-tumor immune effects, thereby improving efficacy. Currently, a number of therapies based on these findings have entered clinical trials.

The two winners could not be contacted

Secretary-General: I ask them to call me back

According to Red Star News, interestingly, on October 6th, local time, after the Nobel Prize Committee announced the winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, it was unable to contact one of the winners: American scientist Fred Ramsdell.

According to reports, a spokesperson for the laboratory where Ramsder works said in an interview that Ramsder is "living the best life possible" and that he is on a hiking trip "away from the hustle and bustle."

Ramsdale's partner Jeffrey Bruston also said he had been trying to get in touch with him, but failed to get in touch because Ramsdale may have traveled on foot in the remote area of Idaho.

Meanwhile, the Nobel Committee also encountered obstacles in trying to contact another laureate, Blanco.

Blanco was informed by an Associated Press photographer who came to her home early in the morning about her winning the prize, saying that she had previously ignored the Nobel Committee¡¯s call: ¡°My phone rings, I see a Swedish number, and I think ¡®it¡¯s just some kind of junk message.¡¯¡±

Blanco¡¯s husband said: ¡°When I told Mary she won the prize, she said, ¡®Don¡¯t be stupid.¡¯¡±

Thomas Perlman, secretary general of the Nobel Committee, once said at a press conference announcing the winners: "I ask them to call me back if they have the opportunity."

Extended reading

Superconducting quantum computing wins physics award, Japanese and Chinese scientists miss

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on October 7 that it will award the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics to John Clark, Michel Devoret and John Martinis for their discovery of macro quantum mechanical tunneling effects and energy quantization in circuits.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the theoretical system of quantum mechanics and has been designated by the United Nations as the "International Year of Quantum Technology", which is likely to affect the awarding field of awards by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In the field of quantum mechanics, where talents are abundant, why did the Nobel Prize Committee choose these three professors from the University of California? The reporter interviewed Li Xiaopeng, a professor at the Department of Physics at Fudan University, and Ying Jianghua, an assistant researcher at the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the Li Zhengdao Institute of Shanghai Jiaotong University.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced today that three scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 for their contributions to quantum mechanics.

Laying the foundation for superconducting qubits

"Everyone who has studied middle school physics is no stranger to circuits. This belongs to classic electricity. And if we make superconducting devices small enough, quantum effects will occur that cannot be explained by classical electricity." Professor Li Xiaopeng, who is engaged in quantum computing research, told reporters.

Between 1984 and 1985, Clark, Devoret, and Martinis conducted a series of experiments using circuits made of superconductors. A superconductor is a component that can conduct current without resistance. In an electrical circuit, superconducting elements are separated by a thin layer of non-conductive material, a device known as a "Josephson junction". By improving and measuring various characteristics of the circuit, the three scientists were able to control and explore the special phenomena that occur when an electric current passes through it.

In classical electrics, energy is continuous, and in quantum-effect circuits, energy is dispersed, which is quantum energy.¡± Li Xiaoping explains that quantum energy is a basic concept of quantum mechanics. If a physical mass cannot change continuously, it can only take some divided values, we say that this amount is quantumized. Like on the ladder, it can only go one step, not half. The physical mass in the macro world seems to be continuously changing, but in the micro world, many physical masses are quantumized. For example, the electron in a hydrogen atom can only take one basic value ¨C 13.6 electron volts or 1/4/91, 1/161, 1/25 and so on, but can not take it twice or 1/2/1/3/1/3 and so on.

They also observed the quantum tunneling effect. This effect refers to the fact that microparticles such as electrons can penetrate or cross the quantum behavior of the "barrier" despite the height of the "barrier" being greater than the total energy of the particles. In classical mechanics, this is something that is impossible to happen.

These important scientific discoveries laid the foundation for scientists to develop superconducting qubits in the future. Superconducting qubits are the basic computing units of superconducting quantum computers. At present, the world's highest-level superconducting quantum computer is the "Zuchongzhi-3". Developed by Pan Jianwei, an academician of China Academy of Sciences, it integrates 105 qubits and is 15 orders of magnitude faster than the fastest supercomputers when handling quantum random line sampling problems.

This is the scene of the announcement of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics, filmed on October 7 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Japanese and Chinese scientists miss Nobel Prize

As the highest academic honor in the scientific community, the Nobel Prize has always only awarded the original innovation "from 0 to 1"; But as we all know, the world's first superconducting qubit came from the cooperative experiment of Japanese scientist Yasunobu Nakamura and Chinese scientist Cai Zhaoshen.

Therefore, the physics prize came out, and some people in the industry were surprised.The three winners, especially the last Martinez, could be said to have achieved significant achievements in the field of superconducting quantum computing "from 1 to 99" and shift from experiment to engineering, from scientific research to application, is it not the Nobel Prize's "wind direction" has changed?

Yasunobu Nakamura, Center for Quantum Computing, RIKEN, Japan.

As the basic unit of superconducting quantum computing, the first superconducting qubit was born in a laboratory in Japan in 1999, but at that time there was only one qubit, and its lifetime was only on the order of nanoseconds. Ying Jianghua said,"The computing power of superconducting quantum computing increases exponentially with the increase in the number of qubits." However, quantum computing, which is particularly "burning money", cannot stay in the laboratory.

On this basis, Martinez, the engineered "push" who led the team to work with Google to make more than 50 superconducting quantum bits, first verified the "quantum superiority" of superconducting quantum computing, and from the experimental level confirmed that superconducting quantum computing has the computing advantage that classical computing could not afford on specific issues. Even though Martinez later left Google, he continued to deepen the field of quantum computing and focused more on the commercialization of technology. This shows that the Nobel Prize began to pay more attention to researchers who played a core role in the transformation of actual scientific achievements and technology applications.

Michelle H. Devorey, Yale University, University of California.

As for the second winner, Devoret, his core contribution is in line with the Nobel Committee's award statement-"Due to the discovery of macro quantum mechanical tunneling effects and energy quantization in superconducting circuits," this discovery is solid-state quantum Information science has laid a key experimental foundation.

This provides a key technical path to solve the core bottleneck of superconducting qubits-coherence time (that is, the "lifetime of storing quantum information" of qubits). Popular science speaking, because of it, the "lifespan" of qubits has been improved from the fleeting nanosecond level to the millisecond level. Using the principle of quantum electrodynamics to achieve efficient manipulation, high-fidelity reading and low-noise isolation of qubit quantum states has become the technical cornerstone of current mainstream superconducting quantum computing platforms (such as IBM, Google Quantum Processor, Zu Chongzhihao, etc.).

John Clarke, University of California.

Ying Jianghua said, "As the first winner of this year's physics prize, Clark was the mentor of Devoret and Martinis, and the related research on macroscopic quantum effects and circuit quantization paved the way for superconducting quantum computing." Clark has made significant contributions to superconductivity and superconducting electronics, especially in the development and application of superconducting quantum interference devices, that is, an ultra-sensitive magnetic flux detector. This also shows that the Nobel Prize in Physics attaches great importance to the transformation and application of scientific achievements.

It is worth mentioning that the 2021 "Mozi Quantum Award" established by Chinese entrepreneurs with a donation of 100 million yuan was awarded to three scientists in recognition of their leadership role in creating superconducting quantum circuits and qubits, namely Clark, Devoret, Yasunobu Nakamura. This time, the first two scientists both won the Nobel Prize, but Yasunobu Nakamura missed it.