In the early morning hours of Monday, October 6, 2025, Associated Press photographer Lindsey Wasson found herself in an extraordinary position - delivering life-changing news to a sleepy scientist who had just won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Scientists Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi were awarded the prestigious prize for their groundbreaking work on peripheral immune tolerance, but it was Wasson who had the honor of telling Brunkow about her victory at her Seattle-area home.
Wasson's unusual assignment began after she had just finished photographing a late-night baseball playoff game in Seattle, where the Seattle Mariners had squeaked out a narrow 3-2 victory against the Detroit Tigers in Game 2 of the American League Divisional Series. At approximately 2:40 AM local time, she received a call to head to the home of one of the Nobel Prize winners who lived in the area. Gathering her photography equipment, Wasson made her way to Brunkow's house, arriving around 4 AM.
"I believe I woke up their dog, and their dog started barking," Wasson explained. "And I think the dog barking woke up Mary's husband, and I don't think he really knew what I was there for. I said, 'Sir, I think your wife just won the Nobel Prize.'" As the first journalist on the scene, Wasson captured exclusive photographs of Brunkow learning about her incredible achievement, documenting the scientist's initial sleepy confusion as she processed the monumental news.
The photographer's assessment of Brunkow's reaction was clear: "I think she was 100% not expecting it. I don't think either of them had any clue that she was even being considered for it. It was for work she had done years and years ago, and I think they just never expected this to happen." Brunkow had actually ignored a late-night call from Sweden, where Nobel Prizes are awarded annually, thinking it was spam. "My phone rang and I saw a number from Sweden and thought: 'That's just, that's spam of some sort,'" Brunkow recalled.
The disbelief was shared by Brunkow's husband, Ross Colquhoun, who recounted: "When I told Mary she won, she said, 'Don't be ridiculous.'" Wasson remained with the newly minted Nobel laureate for hours, capturing not only the initial moments of shock and joy but also beautiful sunrise portraits the following morning. "It was fun to be - to know that I'm going to be part of her retelling of this story of how she found out," Wasson concluded about her unique role in this historic moment.
While Wasson was documenting Brunkow's reaction in Seattle, her two fellow winning scientists learned of their victory in different parts of the world. Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi was reached by phone in his laboratory in Tokyo and was later congratulated by the Japanese Prime Minister. Fred Ramsdell was on vacation with his wife and didn't learn of the win until his wife's phone regained cell service and was quickly flooded with hundreds of congratulatory text messages. All three winners expressed similar feelings of disbelief and honor at receiving the prestigious award.
The Nobel Prize recognition was well-deserved for work that has fundamentally changed our understanding of the immune system. The trio discovered a critical pathway that the body uses to maintain proper immune system functioning, known as peripheral immune tolerance. According to experts, these findings are critical to understanding autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus. The three scientists - Brunkow and Ramsdell in the United States and Sakaguchi in Japan - worked on separate but complementary projects to determine the importance of regulatory T cells.
The groundbreaking discoveries began in 1995 when Sakaguchi first identified regulatory T cells while conducting experiments on mice. Six years later, in 2001, Brunkow and Ramsdell, who were working together at a biotechnology company studying autoimmune diseases, discovered a gene mutation called Foxp3 in mice and recognized its potential impact on human health. "From a DNA level, it was a really small alteration that caused this massive change to how the immune system works," Brunkow explained.
The connection between these separate discoveries proved revolutionary when Sakaguchi, working in Japan, linked the Foxp3 gene to the regulatory T cells he had discovered years earlier. This combined work opened up an entirely new field of immunology, according to rheumatology professor Marie Wahren-Herlenius of the Karolinska Institute. Dr. Jonathan Schneck, a cellular immunology expert at Johns Hopkins University, noted that before this research was published, scientists didn't fully understand how sophisticated the body's system is for differentiating between its own cells and foreign invaders.
The implications of this research extend far beyond academic understanding. Other scientists are now utilizing these findings to develop new approaches for treating autoimmune diseases, improving organ transplant outcomes, and helping the body fight cancer more effectively. Olle Kämpe, chair of the Nobel Committee, emphasized the significance of their work: "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 current focus in the field is determining how to help the body increase its regulatory T cell count to combat autoimmune diseases more effectively. This advancement could significantly reduce reliance on current treatments that often leave patients at substantial risk of infection. The American Association of Immunologists has described the winning scientists' research as having "fundamentally reshaped our understanding of immune balance," noting that this work, which has been developing since Sakaguchi's initial discovery in 1995, has remarkable potential to transform the treatment of many devastating diseases, improve quality of life, and save countless lives.
