Reacción a "Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi for understanding how the immune system is kept under control without attacking organs"

Once again, the Nobel Prize highlights advances in immunology, underscoring the central importance of immunology in modern medicine, both in understanding disease and in developing new therapies that improve the lives of millions of people.

This year's prize recognises a discovery that changed the way we understand the body's defences. Researchers Brunkow, Ramsdell and Sakaguchi demonstrated how certain cells in the immune system—called regulatory T cells—prevent our own bodies from attacking themselves. Thanks to this discovery, we now have a much better understanding of autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, and new strategies have also been developed for treating cancer, transplants and chronic inflammation.