Researchers Who Paved Way To Viagra Win Nobel Prize For Medicine
10/12/98
Dow Jones Online News
STOCKHOLM -(Dow Jones)- Three American researchers on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discovering new properties of nitric oxide, which is key to the anti-impotence drug Viagra and has other applications ranging from treating heart trouble to shock, the Associated Press reported.
The prize went to Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad. Furchgott is a pharmacologist at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, Ignarro is at University of California-Los Angeles and Murad is at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. The prize of 7.6 million kronor ($978,000) is divided equally among the three.
The citation by the Karolinska Institute said "it was a sensation that the simple, common air pollutant (nitric oxide), which is formed when nitrogen burns ... could exert important functions in the organism. "
"Signal transmission by a gas that is produced by one cell, penetrates through membranes and regulates the function of another cell represents an entirely new principle," the citation said.
Nitric oxide can initiate erection of the penis by dilating blood vessels. Pfizer Inc.'s (PFE) wildly popular anti-impotence drug Viagra is based on this effect.
Understanding how nitric oxide transmits the signals also has sparked research on a wide range of new drugs, including those that can be used in the treatment of heart problems, artherosclerosis and shock. Tests are being done to see whether nitric oxide could be used to halt tumor growth.
The physics and chemistry prizes will be announced Tuesday, the economics prize on Wednesday and the peace prize on Friday. All the announcements are made in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway.
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