NMI scientist explains Nobel Prize research

A great honor for NMI scientist Dr. Teresa Wagner: at the Lindau Matinee, an event held in conjunction with the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, she had the opportunity to explain to selected guests why Mary E. Brunkow, Frederick J. Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi were awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Teresa Wagner was a young scientist at the Nobel Laureate Meeting in 2018 and was therefore known to the organizers. Above all, however, her research builds on the findings of the three laureates. Brunkow, Ramsdell, and Sakaguchi were the first to describe regulatory T cells and decipher the gene that controls them. “These groundbreaking findings have spurred the development of new therapeutics for autoimmune diseases and cancer,” says the NMI scientist, describing their achievements.

This is precisely where Teresa Wagner is working today, together with her team at immuneAdvice GmbH, a spin-off from NMI, the University of Tübingen, and Tübingen University Hospital. They want to make these regulatory T cells visible in the body so that they can detect as early as possible whether immunotherapy is working or whether resistance is present. This knowledge can save patients valuable time that would otherwise be spent on potentially ineffective therapy.