UC San Diego graduate Fred Ramsdell to share Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

UC San Diego graduate Fred Ramsdell has been chosen to share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for co-discovering T cells that help prevent the immune system from attacking the body’s own healthy tissues.

Ramsdell, a researcher at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco, is being honored along with Mary Brunkow, a program manager at the Institute of Systems Biology in Seattle, and Shimon Sakaguchi, a researcher at the Immunology Frontier Research Center at Osaka University in Japan.

“The laureates identified the immune system’s security guards, regulatory T cells,” Olle Kämpe, chair of the Nobel Committee, said in a statement early Monday. “Their discoveries have been decisive for our understanding of how the immune system functions and why we do not all develop serious autoimmune diseases.”

The 64-year-old Ramsdell is a Chicago native who earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and cell biology at UCSD in 1983 and a doctorate in immunology at UCLA in 1987.

Ramsdell becomes the latest of many San Diego scientists who have won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The recipients include Ardem Patapoutian, who won in 2021, and Bruce Beutler, who won in 2011.