American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday for discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch which the award-giving body said could pave the way for new pain-killers.
Prof David Julius, a physiologist at the University of California in San Francisco, and Prof Ardem Patapoutian, a neuroscientist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, were honoured for their discovery of receptors in the skin that sense heat, cold and touch – making them crucial for survival. The work paves the way for a range of new medical treatments for conditions such as chronic pain.
David Julius of the University of California utilised capsaicin, a pungent compound from chili peppers that induces a burning sensation, to identify a sensor in the nerve endings of the skin that responds to heat. Ardem Patapoutian, who is with Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Scripps Research, used pressure-sensitive cells to discover a novel class of sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli in the skin and internal organs.
Their findings “have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the 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.”
The breakthrough discoveries, achieved independently of one another, had launched intense research activities that had led to “a rapid increase in our understanding of how our nervous system senses heat, cold and mechanical stimuli,” it said.
The more than century-old prize is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.15 million).
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 Prize for Physiology or Medicine, shared in equal parts this year by the two laureates, often lives in the shadow of the Nobels for literature and peace here, and their sometimes more widely known recipients.
But medicine has been thrust into the spotlight by the COVID-19 pandemic, and some scientists had suggested those who developed coronavirus vaccines could be rewarded this year or in coming years.
