The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1998

 

The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1998 to Robert F Furchgott, Louis J Ignarro and Ferid Murad for their discoveries concerning “the nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system”.
Robert F Furchgott, born 1916
Dept. of Pharmacology,
SUNY Health Science Center
New York
Louis J Ignarro, born 1941
Dept. of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology
UCLA School of Medicine
Los Angeles
Ferid Murad, born 1936
Dept. of Integrative Biology
Pharmacology and Physiology
University of Texas Medical School, Houston


A New Principle

Nitric Oxide, NO, is a short-lived, endogenously produced gas that acts as a signalling molecule in the body. Signal transmission by a gas, produced by one cell, which penetrates membranes and regulates the function of other cells is an entirely new principle for signalling in the human organism.

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