The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet have award the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi and their discoveries which have completely helped change the landscape of our understanding of how autoimmune diseases are prevented and controlled.
This wonderful news circles back to UCSF Diabetes Center and our founding director Jeff Bluestone, who after his tenure at UCSF, went on to co-found Sonoma Biotherapuetics with Fred Ramsdell, Qizhi Tang and Alexander Rudensky, who all remain scientific advisors to the clinical-stage biotechnology company developing engineered regulatory T-cell therapies to treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases by restoring balance to the immune system.
The UCSF Diabetes Center has a rich history on the study of Treg’s in the context of Type 1 Diabetes and how they are a key gatekeeper in preventing the onset of T1D. Bluestone was the first to establish that Treg’s play an important role in controlling the onset of diabetes in the NOD mouse model and took this fundamental insight into both deeper mechanistic work and clinical translation. Working together with Qizhi Tang, the team went on to demonstrate that controlling the T cell receptor specificity could enhance the function and activity of Treg’s for diabetes prevention and this key insight provided the framework for bringing Treg’s to the clinic.
Our Diabetes Center Research group went on to publish first in human studies for clinical trials with Treg’s that have now further developed into companies dedicated to developing Treg’s for autoimmune diseases including Sonoma Biotherapeutics. Ramsdell’s major contribution was to identify the Treg master regulatory gene FOXP3. Further underscoring its role in T1D was the later discovery of patients with mutations in FOXP3 developing the IPEX syndrome that is frequently characterized by the development of multiple autoimmune diseases that frequently includes the development of T1D in the first few months of life.
This is an incredibly exciting time in immunology, and we are amidst the thrill and excitement of celebrating breakthrough discoveries that are making a difference. Current collaborative work between Diabetes Center members Drs. Audrey Parent, Julie Sneddon, and Qizhi Tang are working on improving the dialogue between Treg’s and islet cells. Diabetes Center member Jay Gardner has recently unlocked how Treg’s can be selected in our gut immune system to control tolerance to food antigens by specialized selecting cells that is he is now working on to induce tolerance in other diseases. Mark Anderson's lab continues to forge ahead in further understanding how Treg’s are selected in the thymus to gain their specificity for self-antigen recognition for targets like insulin.
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The entire UC community is enlivened by this news, as Ramsdell holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and cell biology from the University of California, San Diego, and earned his PhD in in microbiology and immunology from UCLA in 1987.
Following a fellowship at the NIH, Ramsdell joined Immunex studying T cell activation and tolerance, with a focus on gene discovery and functional characterization. He later joined Darwin Molecular (which was later acquired by Celltech R&D) to establish the immunology program. Ramsdell joined ZymoGenetics in 2004, where he led teams studying novel proteins with potential regulatory activity in lymphoid cells. In 2008, Novo Nordisk brought on Dr. Ramsdell to help establish the company’s new Inflammation Research Center in Seattle and lead the Immunobiology group.
Prior to SonomaBio, Ramsdell was the CSO at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) where he helped to build and advance multiple research programs from the inception of the Institute. We are so proud that his wondrous career continues with this esteemed prize, and congratulate Brunkow and Sakaguchi equally in this momentous occasion.