Nobel prize physiology/medicine 2025
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Utsikt
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Layman’s explanation by the Nobel prize organisation:
www.nobelprize.org
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 was awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.”
www.nobelprize.org
MeSci
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I'm not sure whether this will help human patients, quite apart from being cruel:
"To understand the role of the thymus in T cell development, they had surgically removed this organ from newborn mice. They hypothesised that the mice would develop fewer T cells and have a weaker immune system. However, if the operation took place three days after the mice were born, the immune system went into overdrive and ran amok, resulting in the mice developing a range of autoimmune diseases.
To better understand this phenomenon, at the start of the 1980s Shimon Sakaguchi isolated T cells that had matured in genetically identical mice and injected them into the mice without a thymus. This had an interesting effect: there appeared to be T cells that could protect the mice from autoimmune diseases (figure 4)."
"To understand the role of the thymus in T cell development, they had surgically removed this organ from newborn mice. They hypothesised that the mice would develop fewer T cells and have a weaker immune system. However, if the operation took place three days after the mice were born, the immune system went into overdrive and ran amok, resulting in the mice developing a range of autoimmune diseases.
To better understand this phenomenon, at the start of the 1980s Shimon Sakaguchi isolated T cells that had matured in genetically identical mice and injected them into the mice without a thymus. This had an interesting effect: there appeared to be T cells that could protect the mice from autoimmune diseases (figure 4)."
Isn't correct knowledge better than ignorance? Knowing how the immune cells work is rather important. If there's no other reasonable option, a bit of animal cruelty might be a lesser evil than letting people suffer needlessly due to a lack of treatment due to lack of knowledge. Is thymus removal really less cruel than poison blocks or live-trapping mice and then tossing them into a chicken pen (very entertaining!).
T-regs also seem to be informed by our microbiome, to let our bodies keep the beneficial strains.
MeSci
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Unfortunately animal experiments tell us little or nothing about humans. I've spent years researching this, and gained degrees based on it.
Yann04
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I definitely have sympathies with the abolitionist view due to the cruelty behind it all. And the fact that even with what seems like stringent regulations the actual conditions in these places are generally terrible and horrifying.
But having read the article @Utsikt sent I came out with the impression that this was one of those rare cases where animal testing did actually lead to a significant discovery in humans.
Fizzlou
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Article Oct 7th ME Research
A quote:
Notably, there is strong evidence for immune system involvement in ME/CFS, and although at present the exact role of Tregs in ME/CFS is unclear, a paper by Nuno Sepúlveda and colleagues, published in 2019, stated that:
“Tregs show promise to be good candidates for the underlying (ME/CFS) pathology due to their capacity to suppress the immune responses against both self and microbial antigens”
More research is needed to understand the role that Tregs may play in ME/CFS.
A quote:
Notably, there is strong evidence for immune system involvement in ME/CFS, and although at present the exact role of Tregs in ME/CFS is unclear, a paper by Nuno Sepúlveda and colleagues, published in 2019, stated that:
“Tregs show promise to be good candidates for the underlying (ME/CFS) pathology due to their capacity to suppress the immune responses against both self and microbial antigens”
More research is needed to understand the role that Tregs may play in ME/CFS.
Nothing at all? I was under the impression that knockout mice (and other creatures) are an important tool for understanding what specific genes do. While there might not be all that many cases where animal testing directly produced an important treatment for humans, I expect there were many cases where important "what not to do"s were learned. This applies to knowledge gained about behaviours, interactions with the world, etc.
Probably too many variables for reasonable speculation, but if animal testing had been completely banned (and completely enforced) starting 3000 years ago, how far behind present medical technology would we be?
I suppose the definition of "cruelty" is variable too. Some would argue that moving a wild animal from its natural home--even if it's too a nice habitat--is cruel. Are lab mice involved in a "are Big Macs more carcinogenic than Wendy's" trial suffering cruelty?
A very messy debate topic.
It's a tool, and just like all other tools, has potential to be useful and potential to be harmful. It's not a case of "all animal testing is useless and pointless cruelty" vs "animal testing should be expanded as much as possible". Some animal testing has little potential for value, while has large potential. Some is very cruel, while some is just animals living in a decent habitat eating decent food and being monitored. Each case needs to be judged on its own.