The Nobel Prize and mainstream medicine

To the Editor: I am amazed by your assertion in your recent column in the Journal that many clinicians fail to equate advances in basic research to advances in clinical medicine. 1 I would therefore like to make some small contribution to your understanding of the work of Richard Axel and Linda Buck, 2004 Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine, 2 and why this was considered worthy of the Nobel Prize.

Our understanding of the nervous system is still very primitive, and their almost complete description of the functioning of the odorant system — a small part of the nervous system — has laid down many of the principles pertinent to the more complex fundamentals for understanding neuronal signalling and signal processing. This is essential to an understanding of neurological and psychiatric diseases. The odorant receptors are also G-coupled protein kinases, and this is one of the most frequently targeted groups of compounds for novel small-molecular therapies.

If anyone still believes that Nobel Prize-winning science, such as understanding neuronal circuitry, is irrelevant to clinical medicine, they might look at the 2003 recipients for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield. They received the award for the discovery of magnetic resonance imaging, which clearly plays a role in “mainstream” medicine.