Nobel Prize

Louis Ignarro reported that EDRF relaxed blood vessels. He also identified EDRF as a molecule by using spectral analysis of hemoglobin. When hemoglobin was exposed to EDRF, maximum absorbance moved to a new wave-length; and exposed to NO, exactly the same shift in absorbance occurred! EDRF was identical with NO. A new principle for signalling…

  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,…

In atherosclerosis, plaques reduce blood flow in the arteries. This decreases oxygen supply to the heart muscle causing chest pain (angina pectoris) and sometimes even myocardial infarction. Treatment with nitroglycerine provides NO, dilates the vessels, and increases blood flow. Thanks to this year’s Nobel Laureates we now understand how nitroglycerine, an important heart medicine, works.…

Robert F Furchgott showed that acetylcholine-induced relaxation of blood vessels was dependent on the endothelium. His “sandwich” experiment set the stage for future scientific development. He used two different pieces of the aorta; one had the endothelial layer intact, in the other it had been removed.

Ferid Murad knew that nitroglycerine caused relaxation of smooth muscle cells. The enzyme, guanylyl cyclase, was activated and increased cyclic GMP, causing relaxation of the muscle. Did nitroglycerin act via release of nitric oxide, NO? He bubbled NO-gas through tissue containing the enzyme; cyclic GMP increased! A new mode of drug action had been discovered!…

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I was born in the lovely coastal city of Charleston, S.C. in 1916 and lived there until I was thirteen. In Charleston I first became enamored of “natural history” when I attended nature study classes and field trips to nearby beaches, marshes and woods, sponsored by the Charleston Museum. I became an avid shell collector…

The first two decades of my life were spent in the New York City area, where the families of both my parents had settled in the 1920s after immigrating from Italy. My father had been a ship builder in Naples but my mother was still a young child when she came from Sicily. They met…

My father, Jabir Murat Ejupi, was born in Albania in 1892 and was the oldest of four children. His mother died when he was 13 years old. He and his family were shepherds and he subsequently ran away from home to sell candy in the Balkan countries as a teenager for several years. Although he…

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