SAN FRANCISCO: One of this year’s Nobel laureates is currently living his best life on an off the grid hiking trip and may not know he has won.
Fred Ramsdell was honoured on Monday with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine but is completely unreachable during his digital detox.
A spokesperson from his San Francisco-based lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, confirmed the researcher is on a hiking foray.
Ramsdell shares the prestigious prize with Mary Brunkow of Seattle and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University for their immune system discoveries.
The Nobel committee has been unable to contact Ramsdell to deliver the groundbreaking news.
Jeffrey Bluestone, a friend and lab co-founder, said he too has been trying unsuccessfully to reach the researcher.
Bluestone believes Ramsdell may be backpacking in the backcountry of Idaho.
The Nobel committee also initially struggled to contact fellow winner Brunkow on the US West Coast, which is nine hours behind Stockholm.
Committee secretary-general Thomas Perlmann confirmed they eventually reached Brunkow after asking her to call back.
The three researchers won for identifying the immune system’s security guards called regulatory T-cells.
Their work concerns peripheral immune tolerance that prevents the immune system from attacking the body.
This research has spawned an entirely new scientific field and potential medical treatments now in clinical trials.
Sakaguchi made the first key discovery in 1995 by identifying a previously unknown class of protective immune cells.
Brunkow and Ramsdell made their crucial contribution to the field in 2001. – AFP