Efforts by the Nobel Prize committee to contact one of this year’s medicine laureates have so far proved unsuccessful, after the researcher was reported to be on an off-the-grid hiking trip in the American wilderness.
Fred Ramsdell, who shared Monday’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Mary Brunkow of Seattle and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University, has yet to receive the news of his award for discoveries that shed light on the workings of the human immune system.
According to colleagues, Mr Ramsdell’s current “digital detox” has left him beyond the reach of phone or email.
“I’ve been trying to get hold of him myself,” Jeffrey Bluestone, a friend and co-founder of Ramsdell’s laboratory, told the AFP news agency. “I think he may be backpacking in the back-country in Idaho.”
RM Block
The Nobel committee also initially struggled to contact Ms Brunkow, who, like Ramsdell, is based on the US west coast – some nine hours behind Stockholm.
“I asked them to, if they have a chance, call me back,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the committee, told reporters, at the announcement of the winners on Monday.
The trio were recognised for discoveries on how the immune system self-regulates, which have led to potential therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases.
It is not the first time Nobel laureates have proved difficult to track down. Seamus Heaney was uncontactable for a day when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. He was eventually contacted by his son by phone in Greece, where he was on holiday, and was initially skeptical about the news.
Meanwhile, Ms Brunkow, Mr Ramsdell and Mr Sakaguchi will share the 11 million Swedish krona (€1 million) award, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm said in a statement Monday.
[ I took a self-imposed digital detox. This is what I learnedOpens in new window ]
The scientists’ work laid the foundation for a new field of research and potential treatments by identifying “the immune system’s security guards” that prevent the body from harming itself, the Nobel Committee said.
The work took place over several decades.
Mr Sakaguchi, 74, paved the way with his discovery of a new class of T cells – the white blood cells that play a crucial role in our defences.
Ms Brunkow, born in 1961, and Mr Ramsdell, 64, built on his findings as they looked for explanations to autoimmune diseases.
Working together at Celltech Chiroscience, a biotech in Washington state, the pair found a faulty gene on mice with severe autoimmune disease caused by a mutation after radiation.
It turned out to be key to regulating T cell function as well as the cause of a rare inherited autoimmune disease called IPEX syndrome.
Two years later, Mr Sakaguchi was able to show that the faulty gene controls the development of regulatory T cells.
The findings spurred the development of potential new medical treatments.
“The hope is to be able to treat or cure autoimmune diseases, provide more effective cancer treatments and prevent serious complications after stem cell transplants,” according to the Nobel Committee.
Researchers are looking at ways to dismantle a wall of regulatory T cells that shields cancer tumours from the immune system, while in autoimmune diseases, they are trying to promote the formation of more regulatory T cells.
Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. A prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.
Last year’s medicine Nobel was awarded to two American scientists for their discovery of a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated via tiny RNA molecules. Other notable discoveries to have earned the honours include insulin in 1923, penicillin in 1945 and the molecular structure of DNA in 1962. – Bloomberg and agencies
