Media Coverage

A story that maps the road from puzzling autoimmunity to the immune system’s “brakes” – regulatory T cells and FOXP3 – and the moment those clues crystallize into a Nobel morning for Mary Brunkow and collaborators.

Pre-dawn calls meet decades of discovery: a crisp walk through how the immune system’s “brakes” (FOXP3 and regulatory T cells) propelled Mary Brunkow to a Nobel, and what that means for autoimmune care, cancer, and transplants.

STAT News details why Mary E. Brunkow (now at ISB), Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi won the 2025 Medicine Nobel – discoveries in peripheral immune tolerance (regulatory T cells/FOXP3) that illuminate autoimmunity and inform new therapies.

KING 5 spotlights Seattle’s Mary Brunkow of ISB, newly named 2025 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. The segment recaps her FOXP3 discovery, from scurfy mouse genetics to regulatory T cells, and captures the hometown reaction as her work shapes therapies for autoimmunity, transplantation, and cancer.

NPR spotlights ISB’s Mary Brunkow, co-recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, tracing her FOXP3 gene discovery from the scurfy mouse to regulatory T cells and immune tolerance, and noting how her work now underpins therapies across cancer, autoimmunity, and transplantation.

The New York Times spotlights ISB’s Mary Brunkow, co-winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, emphasizing her gene-discovery work identifying FOXP3 and establishing regulatory T cells as key guardians of immune tolerance – foundational science now informing cancer, autoimmunity, and transplantation therapies.

ISB’s Mary Brunkow, co-winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is highlighted for her gene-discovery work that pinpointed FOXP3 and unlocked regulatory T cells – core to immune tolerance – with origins in scurfy mouse studies and links to human IPEX disease. Includes how she nearly missed Sweden’s call.

In separate projects over several years, three scientists – Mary E. Brunkow of ISB, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi – uncovered a key pathway the body uses to keep the immune system in check, called peripheral immune tolerance. Their discoveries from decades ago resulted in the 2025 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.