On Monday, American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the 2021 Nobel Prize of Medicine for the discovery of receptors in the skin that sense temperature and touch. It can touch and could pave the way for new painkillers.
The Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said that both of them individually carried out their work, which has helped them show how humans convert the physical impact from heat to touch into nerve impulses that allow us to “perceive and adapt to the world around us”. The journal further explained that this knowledge is being applied to create treatments for chronic pain and many other diseases.
Patapoutian who was born in 1967 to American parents said on his winning that in science many times it is the things they take for granted that are of high interest. He won more than the century-old prize that is worth 10 million Swedish crowns (1.12 million).
New York-born Julius is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco has previously worked at the Columbia University in New York. He said, “I think the work that we’re doing… will help to have a rational approach to developing those kinds of drugs”.
