Research on how we feel touch and temperature wins Nobel Prize in Medicine
US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian jointly won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for their work on sensing touch and temperature
American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch, the award-giving body said on Monday.
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," it said.
"This knowledge is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of disease conditions, including chronic pain."
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Prof Julius and Prof Patapoutian unpicked how human body converts physical sensations into electrical messages in the nervous system.
Their findings could lead to new ways of treating pain, reports the BBC.
Thomas Perlman, from the Nobel Prize Committee, said: "It was a very important and profound discovery."
Prof David Julius's breakthrough, at the University of California, San Francisco, came from investigating the burning pain we feel from eating a hot chilli pepper. He experimented with the source of a chilli's heat - the chemical capsaicin. He discovered the specific type of receptor (a part of our cells that detects the world around them) that responded to capsaicin.
Further tests showed the receptor was responding to heat and kicked in at "painful" temperatures. This is what happens, for example, if one burns their hand on a cup of coffee.
The discovery led to a flurry of other temperature-sensors being discovered. Prof Julius and Prof Ardem Patapoutian found one that could detect cold.
Meanwhile, Prof Patapoutian, working at the Scripps Research institute, was also poking cells in a dish.
Those experiments led to the discovery of a different type of receptor that was activated in response to mechanical force or touch.
The more than century-old prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.15 million). The 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 Medicine often lives in the shadow of the Nobels for literature and peace, and their sometimes more widely known laureates. 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.
Coronavirus continues to haunt the Nobel ceremonies, which are usually full of old-world pomp and glamour. The banquet in Stockholm has been postponed for a second successive year amid lingering worries about the virus and international travel.
Last year's prize went to Americans Harvey Alter and Charles Rice and Briton Michael Houghton for work in identifying the Hepatitis C virus, which causes cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Here are the details on this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine winners:
David Julius
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021
Born: 4 November 1955, New York, NY, US
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch."
Ardem Patapoutian
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021
Born: 1967, Beirut, Lebanon
Affiliation at the time of the award: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Scripps Research, La Jolla, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch."
