Alumnus Ardem Patapoutian (PhD ’96) Wins 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Ardem Patapoutian (PhD ’96)

Caltech alumnus Ardem Patapoutian (PhD ’96), Presidential Endowed Chair in Neurobiology and Professor at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, sharing the award with David Julius of UC San Francisco. The two were honored for their “discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch,” according to the award citation.

The sense of touch is shaped by sensory information related to both temperature—hot or cold—and pressure. Patapoutian and Julius made major contributions that helped to uncover how these processes work and to elucidate how temperature and pressure stimuli are converted into electrical impulses in the nervous systems. Their work is now leading to new treatments for chronic pain, including the development of non-opioid painkillers.

Patapoutian was honored for his discovery of the cellular sensors in the skin and internal organs that respond to mechanical stimuli such as touch. He and his collaborators first cultured a cell line that gave off a measurable electrical signal when individual cells were poked with a tiny pipette. The team systematically knocked out individual genes in these cells, which allowed them to identify the genes that encode for the receptors that respond to pressure.

As a graduate student at Caltech, Patapoutian worked in the laboratory of Barbara Wold (PhD ’78), Bren Professor of Molecular Biology and Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair and director of the Richard N. Merkin Institute for Translational Research. “This is a joy to see,” Wold says. “Ardem came with a great love of biology, zest for discovery, and capacity for fine experimental design. And he was always willing to go an extra mile when it required pure work.”

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