Science Spotlight: Autoimmune Treg therapy from Nobel Prize winner Sakaguchi

Researchers from Keio University School of Medicine and Osaka University, including RegCell Inc.’s scientific founder and co-winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Shimon Sakaguchi, published a pair of Science Translational Medicine papers showing that effector T cells can be turned into regulatory T cells that are functional, stable and capable of suppressing an autoimmune skin disorder in mice.

The authors isolated T cells from mice and human patients that specifically recognized DSG3, the antigen that causes the autoimmune disease pemphigus vulgaris. The isolated cells were then stimulated with IL-2, along with CDK8/19 inhibitors to promote DNA demethylation at the FOXP3 gene locus. High FOXP3 is a key feature required for stable regulatory T cell function...