A Japanese research team that includes 2025 Nobel Prize laureate Shimon Sakaguchi has developed a technique to produce regulatory T cells that suppress excessive immune activity.
Sakaguchi, a professor at the University of Osaka, is among those set to receive this year¡¯s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their T cell research.
The technique turns T cells into regulatory T cells, boosting the effectiveness in curing inflammation and autoimmune diseases. An article on the technique appeared this month in the U.S. journal Science Translational Medicine.
Among T cells, a type of immune cells, some mistakenly attack normal cells and tissue, causing inflammation and autoimmune diseases. While researchers have developed cures to control such T cells by utilizing regulatory T cells, it was difficult to create stable regulatory T cells.
The team succeeded in turning T cells from mice suffering autoimmune diseases into stable regulatory T cells with a special culture method.
The team found through genetic analysis that the developed regulatory T cells have almost the same characteristics as those of T cells that exist naturally in mice.
By injecting the developed regulatory T cells into mice that suffered colitis, the team confirmed effects to curb mice weight loss and improve their survival rate.
Meanwhile, the team also successfully produced regulatory T cells from T cells collected from blood of patients with autoimmune diseases such as Crohn¡¯s disease and systemic lupus erythematosus.
¡°Ideally, we want to create regulatory T cells responding to types of inflammation that we want to suppress,¡± said Norihisa Mikami, leader of the team and specially appointed associate professor at the university. ¡°We expect that our research will lead to cures for autoimmune diseases.¡±
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