When the Nobel committee announced the winners of this year’s medicine prize, one of the winners was absent. Fred Ramsdell, a 64-year-old immunologist and senior adviser at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, was “living his best life” during an off-the-grid hiking vacation when the news broke. Despite several tries, neither the committee nor his colleagues were able to reach him to give the life-changing news.
Jeffrey Bluestone, co-founder of Sonoma Biotherapeutics and a lifelong acquaintance, acknowledged he was also in the dark “I have been trying to get ahold of him personally. “I believe he is backpacking in the mountains of Idaho.”
Breakthrough in Immunology
Ramsdell received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine alongside Mary Brunkow of Seattle, Washington, and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan. The trio was recognized for groundbreaking discoveries that revealed how the immune system protects its own cells.
Their research revealed regulatory T-cells, which are the immune system’s “security guards” and guarantee that the body does not injure itself. The concept, also known as peripheral immune tolerance, has paved the path for autoimmune disease treatments as well as new medical therapies that are currently in clinical testing.
Sakaguchi, 74, discovered these critical immune cells in 1995, which changed immunology. Six years later, Brunkow and Ramsdell discovered a genetic mutation that clarified the critical role of these cells in preventing autoimmune diseases.
Hard to Reach, Easy to Celebrate
The Nobel committee also struggled to find Brunkow, who works at Seattle’s Institute for Systems Biology. The nine-hour time difference between Stockholm and the United States’ West Coast complicated matters even more. She eventually received the call, but joked about the way she had urged the committee to “call back if they had the chance.”
This is not the first time Nobel Prize winners have been difficult to track down. In 2020, Stanford professors Bob Wilson and Paul Milgrom, who won the economics award, both missed calls from Stockholm. Wilson’s wife needed to be contacted, and Wilson ended up waking Milgrom in the middle of the night to deliver the news.
A Legacy in Science
For Ramsdell, the recognition reflects the end result of decades of research into how the body maintains its defenses. While his absence left the Nobel committee waiting, colleagues ensured that his achievements will be remembered for ages.
As Bluestone put it, “He deserves all of this recognition.” Even if he hasn’t picked up the phone yet.
For the time being, Ramsdell is unaware of this win as he treks through the lonely terrain. But when he returns from his online detox, he will discover that he has joined science’s most elite ranks, proving that even the wilderness cannot keep world-changing achievements hidden forever.
