Nobel Prize For Discoverers Of Viagra Principle
By Jonathan Lynn
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Three U.S. scientists whose discoveries led to the use of the Viagra anti-impotence drug won the 1998 Nobel Prize for Medicine Monday.
Robert Furchgott, Ferid Murad and Louis Ignarro were awarded the 7.6 million Swedish crown ($955,500) prize jointly for their discoveries about the role of nitric oxide -- long considered just an air pollutant -- as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system.
The discovery has applications for the treatment of cardiovascular disease, shock and possibly cancer, as well as impotence, said Sweden's Karolinska Institute, which awards the annual prize, one of the most prestigious in medicine.
Nitric oxide is a gas that transmits signals in the organism, allowing messages to be sent from one part of the body to another, and regulates blood pressure and blood flow.
''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 for signaling in biological systems,'' the institute said in its citation.
Furchgott, 82, a pharmacologist at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Brooklyn, established in 1980 that blood vessels dilate, or become wider, because their surface cells -- the endothelium -- produce an unknown signal molecule that makes their smooth muscle cells relax.
Furchgott's ''ingenious experiment'' led to a quest to identify the factor, the institute said.
Murad, 62, now a pharmacologist at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, analyzed how nitroglycerin and similar substances affect vessels, and discovered in 1977 that they release nitric oxide, which relaxes smooth muscle cells.
Ignarro, 57, and now a pharmacologist at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine, participated in the quest for the unknown signal molecule posited by Furchgott, and in a brilliant series of analyses, independently and with Furchgott, concluded it was nitric oxide.
''He (Ignarro) discovered the principle which led to the use of Viagra as an anti-impotence drug,'' Sten Orrenius, professor of toxicology at the Karolinska Institute, told Reuters.
Viagra, the product of research into cardiovascular disease, counters impotence by dilating the blood vessels in the penis. It is produced by Pfizer.
It was a sensation that nitric oxide, a simple, common air pollutant formed when nitrogen burns, for instance in car exhaust fumes, could exert important functions in the organism.
''When Furchgott and Ignarro presented their conclusions at a conference in July, 1986, it elicited an avalanche of research activities in many different laboratories around the world,'' the institute said. ''This was the first discovery that a gas can act as a signal molecule in the organism.'' Further research results rapidly confirmed that nitric oxide is a signal molecule of key importance for the cardiovascular system -- the heart and blood vessels -- and other areas.
''We know today that nitric oxide acts as a signal molecule in the nervous system, as a weapon against infections, as a regulator of blood pressure and as a gatekeeper of blood flow to different organs,'' the institute said.
Found in most living creatures and made by many different cells, it controls blood pressure by dilating arteries, affects behavior by activating nerve cells and when produced in white blood cells becomes toxic to invading bacteria and parasites.
Scientists are now testing whether it can be used to stop the growth of cancerous tumors.
The Nobel prizes were created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the discoverer of dynamite, who died in 1896.
Nobel was prescribed nitroglycerin, one of the key components of dynamite to ease his chest pain when he contracted heart disease, but refused to take it, the institute noted.
''It has been known since the last century that the explosive nitroglycerin has beneficial effects against chest pain,'' it said. ''However, it would take 100 years until it was clarified that nitroglycerin acts by releasing nitric oxide gas.
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