Stockholm, Sweden: Two American scientists Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka won Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday discoveries on an important family of receptors, known as G-protein-coupled receptors, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
Studies like these are significant for developing better drugs.
The human body has about 1,000 kinds of such receptors that let body cells sense and respond to outside signals like danger or the flavour of food.
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 Associated Press reported.
“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.
The US has dominated the Nobel chemistry prize in recent years, with American scientists being included among the winners of 17 of the past 20 awards.
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