The Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine was initially unable to reach the American man who won the 2025 Nobel Prize in that field because he was hiking off-grid.
Fred Ramsdell, along with two others, won the prize this year for his work on immune system tolerance.
Mr. Ramsdell, 64, helped find out that mutations in a specific gene in mice made them vulnerable to autoimmune diseases and that a mutation in an analogous gene in humans caused the autoimmune disease IPEX syndrome, the Nobel Foundation said in a release.
The committee tried calling Mr. Ramsdell in the early morning hours Monday, as did his coworkers at the Sonoma Biotherapeutics lab and other friends and family. Mr. Ramsdell and his wife were on a hiking trip in Montana at the time, and he only found out he won once his wife regained cell service, he told the New York Times.
Mr. Ramsdell was finally able to speak with the officials from the Nobel foundation Tuesday morning, according to the Times.
“They were still in the wild and there are plenty of grizzly bears there, so he was quite worried when she let out a yell,” Secretary-General of the Nobel Assembly Thomas Perlmann told Reuters.
Mr. Ramsdell told the New York Times that “I certainly didn’t expect to win the Nobel Prize. It never crossed my mind.”
He added that he was “grateful and humbled by getting the award, super happy for the recognition of the work in general and just looking forward to sharing this with my colleagues.”
Sonoma Biotherapeutics CEO Jeff Bluestone said in a release that “Fred spent years working behind the scenes to identify the gene that caused devastating systemic autoimmune diseases in a little-known strain of mice. The discovery of the gene, FOXP3, changed our understanding of peripheral tolerance and led to a new field of immunotherapy.”
Initially a co-founder of the lab, Mr. Ramsdell now chairs its scientific advisory board.
In addition to the recognition gained from winning a Nobel prize, he will also split a prize of almost $1.17 million with fellow winners Mary Brunkow and Shimon Sakaguchi, the Nobel Foundation said.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.