Rabat- The Karolinska Institute of Sweden announced Monday that 2 American scientists won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work on how heat, cold, touch, and pressure help activate nerve impulses.
American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian identified receptors in the skin that respond to heat and pressure, which could lead to new ways of treating pain or even heart disease. “This knowledge is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of disease conditions, including chronic pain,” said the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.
The work of the two US-based scientists, which was done independently, is focused on the field of “somatosensation” and explores the ability of specialized organs such as eyes, ears, and skin to see, hear and feel.
“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,” wrote the Nobel committee in a communique.
David Julius is now a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. He was born in 1955 in New York, USA, and received a Ph.D. in 1984 from University of California, Berkeley and was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, in New York.
Since 2000, Ardem Patapoutian has been a scientist at Scripps Research, La Jolla, California, where he is now a physiology Professor. He has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 2014. He was born in 1967 in Beirut, Lebanon.
The Nobel committee’s choice for this year’s award in medicine and physiology comes as a surprise for many observers. With the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, most observers and scientists expected the Nobel Prize to go to scientists whose research was essential for the production of COVID-19 vaccines.
Six prizes are awarded every October. Committees in Sweden and Norway name laureates in a variety of prizes, including medicine, economics, chemistry, literature, physics, and peace work.
