US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian win Nobel Medicine Prize

US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian have won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch that could pave the way for new painkillers.

The Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinka Institute said the findings “have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world around us”.

Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel Committee, told the ceremony that Julius and Patapoutian were ‘very surprised’ to have won the prize.