Translated material
Cellular level
Nobel Prize in Medicine laureates announced
The Royal Swedish Academy yesterday began announcing the list of Nobel Prize laureates for 2000. The first laureates in the field of medicine were named. They were a university professor from Gothenburg, Arvid Carlsson, and two scientists from New York, Paul Greengard and Eric Kandel. The prize was awarded to them for a series of discoveries concerning the interaction of cells in the human nervous system. All three researchers are no longer young, and they made their main discoveries back in the 60s and 70s. However, as noted in the press release of the Nobel Committee, it was they who outlined the direction in which medical science is moving today.Deputy Director for Science at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Raevsky, considers particularly promising work related to the treatment of such a serious illness as Parkinson’s disease. Arvid Carlsson, in particular, studied those parts of the brain that are responsible for transmitting movement, and discovered that Parkinson's disease can occur due to a lack of dopamine in the body. A lack of this substance can lead to the development of other diseases, in particular schizophrenia, says Vladimir Raevsky.
Paul Greengard and Eric Kandel studied how dopamine and other substances behave in the human nervous system and how they can influence the interaction of cells in certain places. “The natural step, after the roots of the disease have been identified,” says Professor Raevsky, “is the creation of drugs. There is already a drug called L-dopa, which should replenish the lack of dopamine in the body and help in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. But the search goes in different directions. For example, our scientists, together with Swedish scientists, are today working on the problem of transplanting embryonic nervous tissue into those areas of the brain where dopamine is lacking. There are, apparently, other ways. But the Nobel Prize is awarded to the discoverers - those who gave the impetus to such research to scientists around the world."