Two Americans win Nobel Prize in chemistry

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Americans Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon won the Nobel Prize in chemistry today for studies of tiny transportation tunnels in cell walls, work that illuminates diseases of the heart, kidneys and nervous system.

Agre, 54, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, discovered in 1988 the "channels" that let water pass in and out of cells, the Royal Swedish Academy said.

MacKinnon, 47, did key studies of the structure and workings of channels that transport charged particles called ions through cell walls. He is with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at The Rockefeller University in New York.

The research sheds light on such conditions as diabetes. Serious diseases of the nervous system, muscle and heart can result when ion channels fail to work properly. This makes ion channels important drug targets for pharmaceutical industry.

"The major impact (of the research) has been on understanding disease, perhaps not yet treating disease," said Gunnar von Heijne, a member of the Nobel Committee for chemistry.

"These are discoveries that are of fundamental importance for the understanding of life processes, not just among humans and higher organisms, but also for bacteria and plants," said Bengt Norden, chairman of the chemistry committee.

Channels are found in all living cells, and are needed for such key body activities as muscle contraction, heart function and communication between nerve cells. Kidney cells use them to remove water from urine, for example.

Because of Agre's work, researchers can follow in detail a water molecule on its way through the cell wall and understand why only water, not other small molecules or ions, can pass, the academy said.

Agre, reached at his home, said, "I'm jubilant. I'm overwhelmed, frankly. One doesn't plan to have this sort of thing happen.... Deep down in your heart a scientist will always dream about something like this."

Ion channels let cells generate and transmit electrical signals, and so are key to letting nerve cells communicate. In 1998, MacKinnon determined the first detailed structure of an ion channel, a technically challenging achievement.

Rockefeller University spokeswoman Lynn Love said today that MacKinnon was out of town and unavailable for comment.