Nobel Medicine Prize awarded to US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for work on touch, temperature
- Nobel winners are announced between October 4 and 11, starting with medicine
- Launched 120 years ago, the awards were created by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel
Nobel season opened on Monday with the prize in medicine going to US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch that could pave the way for new painkillers.
Their groundbreaking discoveries “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 jury said. “This knowledge is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of disease conditions, including chronic pain.”
“In our daily lives we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived? This question has been solved by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates.”
Julius, 65, was recognised for his research using capsaicin – a compound from chilli peppers that induces a burning sensation – to identify which nerve sensors in the skin respond to heat.
Patapoutian’s pioneering discovery was identifying the class of nerve sensors that respond to touch.
Before their discoveries, “our understanding of how the nervous system senses and interprets our environment still contained a fundamental unsolved question: how are temperature and mechanical stimuli converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system,” the jury said.