Sharjah 24 – Reuters: American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday 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.
Patapoutian, who was born in 1967 to Armenian parents in Lebanon and moved to Los Angeles in his youth, learnt of the news from his father as he had been out of contact by phone.
He is credited for finding the celular 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 chili 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.
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".
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