The Sonoma County connection to an off-the-grid Nobel Prize winner

By the time Fred Ramsdell heard the news Oct. 6 while camping in Montana that he had won a Nobel Prize, he had hundreds of messages waiting for him, including from a company he helped start that has a Sonoma County connection.

Ramsdell, who co-founded biotechnology company Sonoma Biotherapeutics, made headlines for missing the call from the Nobel committee that he and two others had been awarded the 2025 prize for medicine for their research into the immune system. On the day of the announcement, he was out of cellphone range vacationing off the grid near Yellowstone National Park, The New York Times reported.

SonomaBio congratulated Ramsdell in an Oct. 6 news release, saying that his work to identify the gene that caused autoimmune diseases in mice was a breakthrough in the research to prevent those diseases in which immune cells attack a patient’s own body.

“The discovery of the gene, FOXP3, changed our understanding of peripheral tolerance and led to a new field of immunotherapy,” said Jeff Bluestone, chief executive officer and president of SonomaBio, in the release.

While the company is based in South San Francisco, the name comes from Bluestone’s time living in Sonoma County, the company revealed in an Oct. 7 email to The Press Democrat.

“Dr. Bluestone has a home in Healdsburg where he lived during COVID. This was also the same period when the company was founded. He often found inspiration while looking out at the beautiful countryside of Sonoma County during ZOOM calls,” wrote spokesperson Stephanie Jacobson in the email. “Thus, the origin of the company name — Sonoma Biotherapeutics.”

Ramsdell, who served as the company’s chief scientific officer and is the current chair of its Scientific Advisory Board, told The New York Times the thought of winning a Nobel Prize never crossed his mind.

“I was just 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, as well,” he said.

 

 



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