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Japan’s Shimon Sakaguchi wins Nobel Prize for discovery of immune system ‘brakes’
R.ELM . Tokyo: In a quieter corner of Osaka, Professor Shimon Sakaguchi has spent four decades probing one of medicine’s great riddles: how the body learns not to attack itself. On Monday, the 74-year-old Japanese immunologist was thrust into the global spotlight as co-winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, honoured for his discovery of regulatory T cells — the microscopic “brakes” that prevent the immune system from turning its fire inward.
The award, shared with American researchers Mary E. Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell, recognises work that has reshaped modern immunology. Regulatory T cells, or Tregs, suppress harmful autoimmune reactions while maintaining the delicate balance that allows the body to fight infection.
“It’s a profound honour,” Sakaguchi said from the Immunology Frontier Research Center at Osaka University. “This recognition belongs as much to my colleagues and students as to me.”
His research, first published in 1995, has since transformed understanding of diseases from Type 1 diabetes to cancer and transplant rejection. By manipulating the number or activity of Tregs, scientists can either stimulate immunity — to attack tumours — or dampen it to prevent rejection of transplanted organs.
Born in Shiga Prefecture, Sakaguchi graduated from Kyoto University’s medical faculty before studying at Johns Hopkins University in the US. He becomes Japan’s sixth laureate in medicine, joining the ranks of stem-cell pioneer Shinya Yamanaka, who hailed his “revolutionary contribution that overturned conventional wisdom.”
Patient groups were equally jubilant. Kozo Iwanaga, head of the Japan IDDM Network for Type 1 diabetics, said: “Families like ours hope his discovery will one day make this disease curable.”
Japan’s scientific establishment has long celebrated humility as much as genius, and Sakaguchi embodies both. “There are so many fascinating things in the world,” he reflected. “Pursue what you love deeply and keep going — one day, you may find yourself somewhere extraordinary.”
