Nobel Prize in Medicine out: What exactly have the winners done, why it matters

The first Nobel Prize of this year, the prize for Physiology or Medicine, has been announced. Mary E Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi have been honoured for their work on the human immune system .

The Nobel Prizes generally follow the same schedule every year, with the Medicine prize coming first, followed by Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace, and Economics.

Among this year’s Medicine winners, Brunkow and Ramsdell are from the USA, while Sakaguchi is from Japan. The research by the two Americans proved to be the second chapter of something Sakaguchi had worked on separately some years ago. After Brunkow and Ramsdell’s findings, Sakaguchi and other scientists managed to stitch their work together.

What exactly have the scientists done, what diseases does their work he