Nobel Prize winner Shimon Sakaguchi visiting professor at University of Turku

Professor Shimon Sakaguchi, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine, is a visiting professor at the IMMUNOCAPs project at the University of Turku. IMMUNOCAPS is part of Research Council of Finland’s InFLAMES Flagship.

Professor Sakaguchi works at the University of Osaka in Japan. He studies the molecular mechanisms involved in the regulation of the immune system. His research has focused on the development and maintenance of regulatory T cells and their role in immune-mediated diseases.

He is currently investigating how human regulatory T cells can be manipulated to control a variety of physiological and pathological immune responses. For this purpose, Sakaguchi has also set up a company to develop treatments based on regulatory T cells for immune-mediated diseases.

Sakaguchi has close links with the University of Turku, where he last visited in May 2025.

The IMMUNOCAPs (Capitalising Immunity to Combat Disease) project led by professor Riitta Lahesmaa focuses on studying the immune system with a view to developing new methods to diagnose and treat immune-mediated diseases. IMMUNOCAPs is part of the Finnish Flagship InFLAMES and is also of the University of Turku’s health, diagnostics and drug development multidisciplinary research theme.