One of this year’s Nobel Prize winners is not only a brilliant medical scientist, but also a master of balance – between the laboratory and life. In fact, he might be so good at it that he doesn’t even know he’s won.
Fred Ramsdell was among those honored Monday with a Nobel Prize in Medicine 2025, but he is currently “lives his best life” on a “off the grid” hiking, a spokesman from his San Francisco-based laboratory, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, told to AFP.
Ramsdell shared the prestigious award with Mary Brunkow from Seattle, Washington and Shimon Sakaguchi from Osaka University in Japan for their discoveries related to the function of the immune system.
But Laureates Digital Detox means that the Nobel Committee has not been able to reach him and break the news.
Jeffrey Bluestone, a friend of Ramsdells and co -founder of the laboratory, said the researcher deserves credit, but he can’t reach him either.
“I’ve been trying to grab him himself. I think he can backpacking in the hinterland of Idaho,” Bluestone told AFP.
The Nobel Committee also hit a roadblock that tried to reach Brunkow – both scientists are based on the US west coast, which is nine hours behind Stockholm – but eventually got her.
“I asked them if they have a chance, call me back,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the Nobel Committee, at the press conference that announced the winners.
The three won the award for research identifying the “security guards” of the immune system, called regulatory T cells.
Their work relates to “peripheral immune tolerance” which prevents the immune system from harming the body, and has led to a new research area and the development of potential medical treatments now evaluated in clinical trials.
Sakaguchi, 74, found the first key find in 1995 and discovered a previously unknown class of immune cells that protect the body from autoimmune diseases.
Brunkow, born in 1961 and now senior project manager at the Institute of Systems Biology in Seattle, and Ramsdell, a 64 -year -old senior adviser at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, made the second important discovery in 2001.
