A life in context
The person behind the prize
Ramsdell is an immunologist who has worked at the boundary between basic research and biotechnology. His collaboration with Mary Brunkow used an inherited mouse disorder to investigate why the immune system sometimes attacks the body it should protect.
The contribution
With Brunkow, he linked severe immune dysregulation to Foxp3. Combined with Sakaguchi’s work, that discovery helped explain the development and function of regulatory T cells.
The idea in plain language
An immune system must fight threats without destroying the body. Removing some dangerous cells early in their development is not enough: immune responses also need active restraint in the rest of the body.
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