American researchers win chemistry Nobel for protein studies key to developing improved drugs
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN — Two American researchers won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for studies of protein receptors that let body cells sense and respond to outside signals like danger or the flavour of food. Such studies are key for developing better drugs.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka had made groundbreaking discoveries, mainly in the 1980s, on an important family of receptors, known as G- protein- coupled receptors.
About half of all medications act on these receptors, including beta blockers and antihistamines, so learning about them will help scientists to come up with better drugs.
The human body has about 1,000 kinds of such receptors, structures on the surface of cells, which let the body respond to a wide variety of chemical signals, like adrenaline.
Some receptors are in the nose, tongue and eyes, and let us sense smells, tastes and light.
“They work as a gateway to the cell,” Lefkowitz told a news conference in Stockholm by phone. “As a result they are crucial ... to regulate almost every known physiological process with humans.”
Lefkowitz, 69, is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.
Kobilka, 57, worked for Lefkowitz at Duke before transferring to Stanford University School of Medicine in California, where he is now a professor.
Lefkowitz said he was fast asleep when the Nobel committee called, but he didn’t hear it because he was wearing ear plugs. So his wife picked up the phone.
“She said, ‘ There’s a call here for you from Stockholm,”’ Lefkowitz told The Associated Press. “I knew they ain’t calling to find out what the weather is like in Durham today.”
He said he didn’t have an “inkling” that he was being considered for the Nobel Prize.
“Initially, I expected I’d have this huge burst of excitement. But I didn’t. I was comfortably numb,” Lefkowitz said.
Kobilka said he found out around 2: 30 a. m., after the Nobel committee called his home twice. He said he didn’t get to the phone the first time, but that when he picked up the second time, he spoke to five members of the committee.
“They passed the phone around and congratulated me,” Kobilka told AP. I guess they do that so you actually believe them. When one person calls you, it can be a joke, but when five people with convincing Swedish accents call you, then it isn’t a joke.“
He said he would put his half of the 8 million kronor ($ 1.2 million) award toward retirement or “pass it on to my kids.”