Mary E. Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell of the United States and Japan's Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for research into how the immune system is kept in check. Photo / Claudio Bresciani, TT News Agency, AFP
Mary E. Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell of the United States and Japan's Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for research into how the immune system is kept in check. Photo / Claudio Bresciani, TT News Agency, AFP
One of this year’s Nobel winners is a leading medical researcher who also offers a shining example of work-life balance – so much so that he might not know he won.
Fred Ramsdell was among those honoured today with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine, but he’s currently “living hisbest life” on an “off the grid” hiking foray, a spokesperson from his San Francisco-based lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, told AFP.
Ramsdell shared the prestigious prize with Mary Brunkow of Seattle, Washington and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan for their discoveries related to the functioning of the immune system.
But the laureate’s digital detox means the Nobel committee has been unable to reach him and break the news.
Jeffrey Bluestone, a friend of Ramsdell’s and co-founder of the lab, said the researcher deserves credit but he can’t reach him, either.
“I have been trying to get a hold of him myself. I think he may be backpacking in the backcountry in Idaho,” Bluestone told AFP.
The Nobel committee also hit a roadblock trying to reach Brunkow – both researchers are based on the US West Coast, which is nine hours behind Stockholm – but eventually got hold of her.
“I asked them to, if they have a chance, call me back,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel committee, at the press conference announcing the winners.
Shimon Sakaguchi, the Japanese immunologist who won this year's Nobel Prize in medicine, said he hoped the award will help further advance research and patient care. Photo / Paul Miller, AFP
The three won the prize for research that identified the immune system’s “security guards”, called regulatory T-cells.
Their work concerns “peripheral immune tolerance” that prevents the immune system from harming the body and has led to a new field of research and the development of potential medical treatments now being evaluated in clinical trials.
Sakaguchi, 74, made the first key find in 1995, discovering a previously unknown class of immune cells that protect the body from autoimmune diseases.
Brunkow, born in 1961 and now a senior project manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Ramsdell, a 64-year-old senior adviser at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, made the other key discovery in 2001.
