Mary E. Brunkow

Mary Elizabeth Brunkow (born April 23, 1961) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, immunologist, and co-discoverer of the gene, later named FOXP3, that causes the scurfy mouse phenotype. Her research, with Fred Ramsdell, on the FOXP3 gene became part of the foundation for modern regulatory T cell molecular biology and led to her sharing the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi for their research on peripheral immune tolerance.

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Quotes

You have to find the thing that is of most interest. I like the idea of really diving deep into something. Science in general is really a process of seeking the truth. You would hope that the things you learn are really the way things are, as opposed to something that’s based on a belief where there’s really no proof. I like the idea of something really concrete and coming up with a discovery that proves something. The other thing that is exciting about research is that – it’s also something that makes it frustrating – is that you’re never really done. You find something, it’s a discovery and that always leads to the next hypothesis, the next question that you need an answer for. It is a constant process of discovery, which is also frustrating at times, because you don’t ever really finish anything.
- Interview with the 2025 Nobel Prize laureate in physiology or medicine Mary Brunkow. nobelprize.org (6 December 2025).

... the work that’s being honored by the Nobel Prize was done 25 to 30 years ago, and I haven’t really worked in that field since. That right there was such a surprise to hear that the work was being recognized in that way. I mean, 25 years ago, I knew that what we had done was important and it was pretty cool. But it wasn’t until two months ago, when I started looking more closely back at what’s happened in the intervening 25 years, that I really realized what the impact of what we did has had on how you can think about treating things like autoimmune diseases and cancer.
- as quoted by Selin Filiz in: (January 2026) "Q&A: Mary E. Brunkow shares research journey, urges scientific curiosity". Daily Bruin.

In Tilghman’s lab at Princeton, Brunkow “was one of the first students brave enough to tackle the mysterious H19 gene,” which had been dismissed as junk by other scientists, said Elizabeth Gavis, chair of molecular biology and Princeton’s Damon B. Pfeiffer Professor in the Life Sciences. Brunkow’s graduate research, largely unrelated to the work for which she has been honored with the {[w|Nobel Prize}}, contributed to the current understanding of genomic imprinting — the concept that a gene can be shut down depending on whether it was inherited from the mother or the father.
“She was incredibly bright, bold and took on a project in my lab that had a very unexpected twist,” said Tilghman, professor of molecular biology and public affairs, emeritus. “That twist led us to propose that a very mysterious gene we were studying at the time — the first long non-coding RNA to be described — must have an important function and wasn’t either ’junk’ or a mutated gene that was no longer functional.”
- Liz Fuller-Wright, Mary Brunkow *91 receives Nobel Prize. Princeton University Alumni (alumni.princeton.edu) (October 6, 2025).