A Nobel Prize is more than a celebration of just one discovery. For Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi, one of three recipients of this year’s award for research in immunology, it represents a lifetime of “swimming against the tide,” according to a statement from the Nobel committee.

Sakaguchi, now a professor at Osaka University, made some of the key discoveries behind this year’s Nobel Prize almost 30 years ago, finding that the immune system’s complex network of T cells protects the body from harming itself while it’s in the process of removing dangerous outsiders. Even a decade before that, Sakaguchi co-authored a study at Johns Hopkins University in 1985 that bucked conventional understanding of the immune system’s checks and balances. Now, with advances in genetic understanding from fellow Nobel winners Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell, that lifetime achievement is gaining the recognition it deserves.

Drugmakers owe much to immunology experts like Sakaguchi and others. Today, we’re looking at some of the latest breakthroughs in immunology comprising a new wave of innovation.

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