Opinion 2025 Nobel Prize for medicine reveals the significance of immunology. India has work to do

This award underscores a critical trend: Pathbreaking discoveries in immunology are consistently attracting the attention of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated to the public that immunology is an undeniable cornerstone of public health and economic resilience. Decades of prior research enabled the rapid deployment of a new generation of vaccines, saving countless lives. The Academy reinforced this by awarding immunologists Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman the 2023 prize for their pioneering work on nucleoside base modifications, which made effective mRNA vaccines against Covid-19 possible.

More recently, immunology has transformed oncology through new-age treatments, rightfully termed “immunotherapies”. Checkpoint inhibitors, for instance, are now a widely adopted therapeutic modality for many cancers. Once again, the Royal Swedish Academy took note, awarding the 2018 prize to immunologists James P Allison and Tasuku Honjo for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation. Innovative next-generation therapies like engineered immune cells (for example, the CAR-T cells) are now extending this domain even further.

These recent Nobel Prizes point to something more profound: The field of immunology is expanding its influence on both biology and medicine more than ever. To emphasise this, consider that 21 immunologists have been awarded the Nobel Prize over the last 50 years — a striking increase compared to the preceding half-century. We now know the immune system’s influence is far greater than originally imagined, with immunologists identifying critical roles for immune cells in regulating metabolism, brain functioning, and healthy ageing. Even the environmental determinants of health in the face of climate change are shown to profoundly affect our immune systems.

What does this mean for India? How do we respond to these 21st-century revelations about the crucial role of immunology and its ever-increasing global recognition? As a master regulatory network connecting every organ in the body, nurturing immunology is a strategic priority for any nation with serious health ambitions. Given India’s unique challenges, including its burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases, we must heed this call urgently. Are we ready to adapt to this “immunological era” in biomedicine? The size of our scientific workforce in this domain suggests we have much work to do.

The challenge is not trivial, as immunology research demands close interaction between clinicians and basic biologists. Returning to the recent Nobel examples, while Allison, Karikó, Weissman, Brunkow, and Ramsdell are basic biologists, Sakaguchi and Honjo are trained clinicians who pursued research in immunology. In India, a significant gap persists between immunological research and clinical practice; these two worlds often operate in parallel, their conversations failing to fully intersect. Reshaping how we teach biology and medicine to give immunology its due emphasis is an urgent necessity. This will not only keep pace with global science but also empower a new generation to solve local problems — from understanding the prevalence of certain autoimmune diseases in India to designing uniquely effective vaccines, making cutting-edge cancer immunotherapies more affordable, and mitigating the detrimental effects of climate change and pollution on human health.

Our educational institutions must keep pace with this changing scientific reality. For medical graduates, immunology can no longer be compressed into a pre-clinical textbook—a subject to be mastered for an exam before moving on. Likewise, basic biology graduates must be introduced to immunology early, with opportunities to work on unanswered questions in the field. We must create focused postgraduate training programs in immunology that combine hands-on laboratory experience with a deep understanding of real-world problems. To achieve all this, dedicated departments of immunology in Indian universities can be great facilitators.

Bolstering immunology in India also has a powerful economic driver in our growing pharmaceutical industry. For India to evolve from its role as the “pharmacy of the world” in generic drug manufacturing to a leader in innovative drug discovery, a strong immunology workforce is crucial. The global shift towards biologics and immunotherapies means the industry needs scientists who understand the intricate language of the immune system. Investing in immunology education is an investment in a knowledge-based economy, creating high-skilled jobs and retaining talent within the country.

To effectively harness the power of immunology — the crucial bedrock of modern biomedicine — we must undertake a deliberate and expansive reform of how we teach it and nurture the human capital invested in it. We need to create a generation of “bilingual” professionals. Medical graduates must be trained to see the immune system not as a static chapter, but as the dynamic, underlying context for nearly every disease process. Concurrently, students of basic biology require training that firmly connects their mechanistic research to its ultimate clinical application, fostering a translational mindset alongside a zeal for fundamental discovery. Expanding immunology education is going to be the essential fuel for the next wave of medical breakthroughs, as well as for the health and economy of India.

The writer is Professor and Head, Department of Biology, Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University