The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has selected three people, including Professor Shimon Sakaguchi of the Immunology Frontier Research Center, Osaka University, for the 2017 Crafoord Prize in the field of arthritis.The award ceremony will be held in Stockholm in May and the winners will be awarded a prize of Skr 3 million.
According to Osaka University, the Crafoord Prize was established in 1980 by the inventors of the artificial kidney, Holger Crafoord, and also has the purpose of complementing areas not covered by the Nobel Prize.The fields are astronomy / mathematics, earth science, life science, and arthritis.Winners in one field are announced every year, and this time, in addition to Professor Sakaguchi, Fred Ramsdel and Alexander Rudensky, who belong to US research institutes, were also selected.
Professor Sakaguchi was highly praised for discovering regulatory T cells (* 1) related to immunity and elucidating the mechanism.Immunity works for the purpose of protecting the human body, but if it works excessively, it may attack the human body and cause autoimmune diseases such as rheumatism.Regulatory T cells play a role in suppressing that attack.
This is the third person to receive the Crafoord Prize from Osaka University, following former President Tadamitsu Kishimoto and former President Toshio Hirano.Professor Sakaguchi commented, "It is a great honor to receive this award following Professor Kishimoto and Professor Hirano, who are great pioneers in the fields of autoimmune diseases and arthritis. I would like to encourage this award and devote myself to further research." Has been announced.
(* 1) Regulatory T cells A type of T cell that controls the suppressive control (immune tolerance) of the immune response, such as a brake (negative control mechanism) for suppressing an excessive immune response and maintenance of immune homeostasis. Play a role
