Pair win Nobel for unlocking mystery of skin receptors
Gulf Times
Nobel Committee secretary Thomas Perlmann is seen next to a screen displaying the winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, David Julius (left) and Ardem Patapoutian, during a press conference at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Medicine yesterday for the discovery of receptors in the skin that sense temperature and touch and could pave the way for new pain-killers. Their work, carried out independently, has helped show how humans convert the physical impact from heat or touch into nerve impulses that allow us to “perceive and adapt to the world around us”, the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said. “This knowledge is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of disease conditions, including chronic pain.” “In science many times it is the things we take for granted that are of high interest,” Patapoutian said of winning the more than century-old prize, which is worth 10mn Swedish crowns ($1.15mn). He is credited for finding the cellular mechanism and the underlying gene that translates a mechanical force on our skin into an electric nerve signal. Patapoutian is a professor at Scripps Research, La Jolla, California, having previously done research at the University of California, San Francisco, and California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. New York-born Julius, 65, is a Professor at University of California, San Francisco (UCFS), after earlier work at Columbia University, in New York. His findings were inspired by his fascination for how natural products can be used to probe biological function and he used capsaicin, the molecule that makes chilli peppers spicy by simulating a false sensation of heat, to understand the skin’s sense of temperature. Julius hopes his work will help identify new strategies for treating chronic pain syndromes. Julius won the $3mn Breakthrough Prize in life sciences in 2019. Jan Adams, chief science officer at German drugmaker Gruenenthal GmbH, which markets pain relief skin patches and creams based on the TRPV1 capsaicin receptor discovered by Julius, said his work had “opened up a whole new field of research for new non-opioid pain therapies”. Both laureates were caught off guard, according to the committee. Professor Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general for the Nobel Assembly and the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, described them as “incredibly happy and as far as I could tell very surprised and a little bit shocked”. Last year, the award went to three virologists for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus. The prestigious Nobel prizes, for achievements in science, literature and peace, were created and funded in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel. They have been awarded since 1901, with the economics prize first handed out in 1969. The Nobel season continues today with the award for physics and tomorrow with chemistry, followed by the much-anticipated gongs for literature on Thursday and peace on Friday before the economics prize winds things up on Monday, October 11.