This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded for the discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch

For Magnus Berglund, a patent attorney at Ström & Gulliksson, one of the Nobel Prizes this year is of special interest. He has previously been involved in research relating to capsaicin, a plant substance found in chillies that induces a burning sensation. The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries of the receptors for temperature and touch – a discovery for which capsaicin’s effect on human nerve cells was central.

All of Ström & Gulliksson’s patent attorneys have high technical competence, and the majority have previously been conducting research at Universities or been involved in exciting R&D projects in the industry.

– Ström & Gulliksson’s Life Science team alone can boast many specialised competencies, and across the firm as a whole all our staff are highly educated. Many of us have PhDs in a range of areas, and several of us have hands-on experience of working in research and development at companies in innovative industries. It’s a real advantage for our clients, says Magnus Berglund. He talks about his excitement at hearing the announcement of the Nobel laureates, David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian.

The prize was awarded to them jointly for their discoveries on how temperature-sensing and pressure-sensitive ion channels can explain how heat, cold, and mechanical stimuli are converted into nerve signals and so are sensed by us humans. In the late 1990s, David Julius saw the possibility of a breakthrough when he was studying how the chemical substance capsaicin can cause a burning sensation when we eat chilli peppers. It was known that capsaicin activates nerve cells that normally register pain, but not how capsaicin affects the cells themselves to trigger a signal. It was only when Julius examined the sensitivity of ion channels to heat that he found a receptor, which is activated at temperatures that are perceived as painful. Independently of each other, David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian also identified a similar receptor which is activated by cold by examining the chemical substance menthol, which is a plant substance that can be found for instance in mint and which is often used in cough sweets. Ardem Patapoutian and his colleagues had set out to look for the hard-to-find receptors that enable our cells to respond to mechanical pressure. This was a starting point for later breakthroughs that led to an explosive development in the number of studies by his research group and other laboratories. 

Like the Nobel laureates, Magnus Berglund has been interested in the effects of capsaicin, and he is a co-author of a number of scientific publications, including ‘Discovery of a potent and long-acting bronchorelaxing capsazepinoid, RESPIR 4-95’, which was published in 2008 in Pulmonary Pharmacology & Therapeutics.

– We were looking at a chemical compound called capsazepine, which was known to counteract the effects of capsaicin, i.e. to act as antagonist. We investigated and further developed it into new compounds to see if and how they could dilate the small airways in the lungs. My PhD thesis was about redesigning and improving the compound, says Magnus Berglund, who was a PhD student in organic chemistry at Lund University and did his research on surgical lung tissue samples.

– We measured the actual muscle contraction in lung tissue under physiological conditions. It was exciting to see that by adding the compounds we’d developed in the lab we could prevent the smallest airways from constricting, which is crucial in the treatment of asthma and COPD. Systematically studying those types of chemical compounds, modifying them, and making them more potent is something Big pharma has been interested in for a long time, and still is. In a way, my PhD research was a pharmaceutical project that an actual pharmaceutical company would pick up on later and develop.

– I never imagined I was researching something in a field that years later would be worthy of the Nobel Prize. My interest was using chemistry and chemical knowledge as a tool to really understand physiology and pave the way for new medicines! This year’s Nobel Prize and the attention given to the field really opens up for further research, which I’m looking forward to following. 

Sources and more about the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021 can be found here.