UCSD - University of California - San Diego

12/09/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 12/09/2025 11:16

The Shock of a Lifetime: A Conversation with UC San Diego’s Newest Nobel Laureate Alumnus

Published Date

December 09, 2025

Article Content

University of California San Diego alumnus Fred Ramsdell will be presented the Nobel Prize by the King of Sweden on Dec. 10 in Stockholm, Sweden. But getting the news about the life-changing award wasn't so easy.

In early October, when the Nobel Prize committee was busy notifying new recipients of their awards, Ramsdell was blissfully off the grid. The Nobel Prize committee attempted to reach him to deliver the blockbuster news that he was selected to receive a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to immunology, but he was deep in Montana's remote, snow-covered mountain wilds when the calls were made. He and his wife Laura O'Neill schedule their camping trips in September when the park crowds lessen and they can enjoy weeks of wilderness without any digital interruptions.

After driving through Yellowstone, they finally emerged from the Montana backcountry and reached a small town, securing their first internet connection in many days. While Ramsdell walked their two dogs, his wife's phone began blowing up with hundreds of messages. Ramsdell heard O'Neill's screams and initially feared a grizzly bear attack.

Instead, she informed him that he, along with Mary Brunkow and Shimon Sakaguchi, had just become a Nobel laureate, an achievement he still has trouble grasping. In this Q&A, Ramsdell, a 1983 UC San Diego graduate in biochemistry and cell biology, discusses his time at UC San Diego, his Nobel Prize-winning research and the consequences of federal funding threats to American science.

What was your initial reaction when you received the news that you won the Nobel Prize?

When I finally got online, I called the Nobel Committee back but they were in bed because it was three o'clock in the afternoon here, so it was midnight or so there. I left a message and I just said, "I hear you're trying to reach me. Feel free to call whenever you want." At some point we decided we should get dinner, so we went down to an Irish pub and sat at the bar and had fish and chips and beer. It's a Monday night and it's packed. Monday Night Football is on at the bar. And I'm looking around and no one in this bar has any idea what just happened to me. This is crazy. I'm here sitting in a bar in Livingston, Montana. I mean, it was weird but I liked it. It was cool, but it was not your normal "Nobel Day."

Fred Ramsdell and his wife Laura O'Neill. Credit: Fred Ramsdell

It was such a shock that it happened. I still have an amazing amount of imposter syndrome around this. I can't believe that it is actually going to be me standing up there receiving the Nobel Prize. It's beginning to sink in, but I'm still not sure it's fully sunk in yet at this point.

Were you interested in science from an early age?

For me, the beginning of my scientific career was just being a curious kid. My parents didn't go to college. None of my siblings went to college at the time. So I was the first person in my family to go to college. But I'd always been kind of a curious kid. I didn't really have a particular focus in mind. I always liked the sciences and loved oceanography. I loved the outdoors and many people now know I thought I would be a park ranger at one point. I first went to Foothill (Community) College in the Bay Area for my first two years since we didn't have the money for me to go to university.

Why did you choose to attend UC San Diego?

UC San Diego for me was a really interesting opportunity. It's part of the University of California system, so you apply to a bunch of places, but UC San Diego was actually my first choice. It was not the Bay Area, so that was good. I wanted to get away from home for a little while. I'd been living at home for 20 plus years and I wanted to go somewhere else. But also they had an amazing program in the sciences, which I thought was fantastic.

It was such a shock that it happened. I still have an amazing amount of imposter syndrome around this. I can't believe that it is actually going to be me standing up there receiving the Nobel Prize. It's beginning to sink in, but I'm still not sure it's fully sunk in yet at this point. - New Nobel laureate Fred Ramsdell
Fred Ramsdell. Credit: Hunter D'Antuono, Flathead Beacon

How did UC San Diego help set the stage for your career?

UC San Diego is where I actually fell in love with immunology. I took a course from a professor there named Dick Dutton, who's a famous immunologist. I got hooked right away. I was amazed at how important the immune system is, and yet how little our knowledge of it was at that time. This is the early '80s, and we were just developing the tools that have opened up so much since then. Our understanding was really rudimentary at that point, but it was clearly important for everything.

Dick Dutton's single course in immunology was really interesting and important for me in shaping my direction. It focused on both the basic science side of immunology as well as the clinical side. And there were aspects of it that didn't make sense to me. I found it fascinating.

I remember this really clearly that after the final, I looked at one of the answers as to how it was graded, and I totally disagreed with the grade. I said "Wait a minute, that's wrong." So I went to his office during office hours and I said, "Why did I get this grade? This isn't right." And we started talking about it and we were in there for two hours. I went on this diatribe and I think he finally raised my grade to get me out of his office. But for me, most important was that conversation about how the immune system worked and all the exceptions to the "rules" - because the rules were more like guidelines at the time. The conversation, the ability to argue and debate about this stuff, was the process that was really important to me. It was the first time I'd ever really gotten that engaged in the science where I felt like it was interactive as opposed to just having stuff thrown at me.

Describe peripheral immune tolerance and the discoveries that won the Nobel Prize?

One of the things about the immune system is its focus, as most people I think appreciate, to keep us well from pathogens - viruses, bacteria, whatever - and prevent us from getting sick. When we get sick, we develop an immune response to that. We don't get sick as bad the second time. So it's very good at that, developed over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. However, it can also recognize our own tissues. And that's why some people get arthritis and Crohn's disease and MS (multiple sclerosis) and any number of other diseases that I could name. That's an unfortunate consequence. The immune system has a built-in system so that most of us don't come down with those complex diseases.

Fred Ramsdell, center, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Mary Brunkow (left) and Shimon Sakaguchi. Credit: Nobel Foundation

When I was starting out in my own career, I was very interested in trying to figure out how the immune system regulates itself because autoimmune disease is clearly a failure of that regulation. A lot of things have to happen for diseases to occur like that. But, turns out, one of the things that controls that system is a small set of cells within the immune system called regulatory T cells. And we didn't know about these back in the '80s, but in the '90s, one of my fellow laureates, Shimon Sakaguchi, described these cells in mice. He described their ability to control the immune response.

Another collaborator, Mary Brunkow, cloned the gene that was responsible for that. We subsequently showed that that same gene existed in humans. The gene is called Foxp3 and it turns out that that gene is only expressed in the subset of cells that Shimon Sakaguchi described. And it controls their development and their activity. So now we understood how to find these cells. We had a molecular characterization for the cells, and we could much more readily explore the function and the lack of function of these cells in autoimmune patients. So that's what the award is for. But more important than the award is now understanding the regulatory processes, or at least the dominant regulatory process, in people that controls these autoimmune conditions.

We postulated back in the year 2000 that if you could give a whole bunch of these cells to autoimmune patients, you might be able to control their disease. We didn't know how to isolate them. There were a lot of things we didn't know how to do back in the year 2000. But if you flash forward 15 years, we've learned a lot. Now you actually can do these programs. Now people are putting these cells into patients and trying to see if we can cure disease. And there's numerous companies doing it. I actually helped start one of them, but there's multiple companies doing this now.

What is your assessment of the state of federally funded research and the importance of foundational research?

We are in an interesting time with respect to fundamental research and it's a time I never would have expected. I have benefited enormously from funding from the National Institutes of Health over the years. And this program wouldn't exist without that funding.

Every drug that gets developed is essentially on the backbone of basic research, almost all of which is funded by the National Institutes of Health. The COVID vaccine, as one example. Almost any drug you see an ad for on television right now, those would not exist without the basic funding of the NIH and basic scientists doing the work. Drug companies - and I worked for biotech companies most of my life - can develop drugs and make therapies. But the fundamental underpinnings of the science, often are at least initiated with NIH funding.

What I find disturbing is not so much the challenges of funding today. I know universities, labs, and individuals, along with a lot of friends, are nervous about their current funding levels - I understand that. What I find more disturbing is a sense in the U.S. that there's a lack of trust and a lack of value that's perceived for funding that science. And I'm not quite sure how we got there. We all have our own ideological principles, but if you don't have a basic sense of trust and value in this activity, then of course you're not going to fund it if you don't trust or believe in it.

I struggle with how we get back to having that level of trust. Because no one I know goes into this business as a way to just benefit their career. They're really trying to accomplish something that's going to be more broadly applicable. Some of it is very basic science, understanding the way various things work, but some of it's much more focused as well on how do I treat X, Y or Z? People really are trying to do something that will provide value in the long run. And how we convey that and communicate that to me is an area where we really need to focus and be much better about because we need to re-establish that trust. I think without that, we're never going to get back to a point where we'll support it as much as we can.

What does that mean for the nation's leadership in biomedical research?

The U.S. has led biomedical research for generations and there's other good science that goes on in many other places, but we've been a leader, certainly, in innovation. I think that's good for the country. I think it's good for the people in this country. It means lots of jobs and lots of diseases that have been met at various levels. I think it's good for humanity. No one wants to see their daughter or their aunt die of something they don't have to die from. I think it's going to be tragic, frankly, if we don't continue to lead in this area. It will be an enormous opportunity missed. And literally people will die and the U.S. will suffer.

The U.S. has led biomedical research for generations... It means lots of jobs and lots of diseases that have been met at various levels. I think it's good for humanity. No one wants to see their daughter or their aunt die of something they don't have to die from. I think it's going to be tragic, frankly, if we don't continue to lead in this area. It will be an enormous opportunity missed. And literally people will die and the U.S. will suffer. - Fred Ramsdell
UCSD - University of California - San Diego published this content on December 09, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on December 09, 2025 at 17:16 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]