Two American scientists are being rewarded for a potential pain treatment breakthrough with the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The video above shows the announcement Monday, as well as reaction from the Nobel Committee and one of the prize winners.
The scientists are David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian. “I was asleep and my phone sort of bleeped and it was from a relative who had been contacted by somebody on the Nobel committee trying to find my phone number and I thought it was sort of a prank,” Julius said Monday. “There’s so many great scientists out there and so many amazing discoveries that, you know, what are the chances?”
The Nobel Prize winners separately identified receptors in the skin that respond to heat and pressure. According to the Nobel Committee, Julius used the active component in chili peppers to help pinpoint the nerve sensors that respond to heat. Patapoutian found pressure-sensitive sensors in cells that respond to mechanical stimulation.
“I think it’s incredibly exciting,” Nobel Committee Secretary-General Thomas Perlmann said. “It concerns one of our senses and we all know, you know, how important it is to sense our surroundings for our survival.”
Some hope the discoveries could lead to pain treatments that reduce dependence on opioids. Julius agrees, saying the Nobel Prize-winning work could “lead to the discovery of new targets and molecules for developing new types of analgesic drugs”.
“I think the sense of touch and pain really sort of was somewhat enigmatic, even among all the senses,” Julius said. “I think the work that my lab has done, that Ardem’s lab has done, really sort of provided the molecular tools to really understand the sense of touch in detail.”
The Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough actually happened decades ago. So far, they have not yet yielded much in the way of effective new therapies.
Richard Harris with the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan said because pain also includes a psychological component, simply identifying how it is triggered in the body isn’t necessarily enough. “Their discoveries are giving us the first inkling of how this type of pain starts, but whether it’s involved in many chronic pain patients remains to be seen,” he said.
Meanwhile, the director of the MRC Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders at King’s College London Oscar Marin said understanding how the body detects changes in pressure could eventually lead to drugs for heart disease if scientists can figure out how to alleviate pressure on blood vessels and other organs.
