Four Scientists Win Bristol-Myers Achievement Prizes

The pain research prize was given to Patrick D. Wall, a physician and professor of anatomy at University College, London, while the neuroscience award is shared by Tomas Hokfelt of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; Walle J.H. Nauta of MIT; and T.P.S. Powell of the University of Oxford. The pain award was presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Toronto last month, and the neuroscience award was presented at a New York City ceremony in October. Commenting on his capturing of the Bristol-Myers Award for Distinguished Achievement in Pain Research—said to be the first ever given in the field—Wall says, “I’m very delighted. This represents recognition of pain research—that it is a serious subject. Pain is still one of the taboo words of modern medicine. Treating symptons has been regarded as a second-class form of medicine. One, of course, would like to go straight to the root cause and cure of the disease. Unfortunately, that’s clearly not possible, so in the meantime, what are you going to do?” What Wall did, among other things, was to serve as codeveloper in the 1960s of the “gate control” theory of pain and to function as founding editor of the 13-year-old journal Pain. He is credited with being the first to recognize that nerve cells that transmit pain are also responsive to nonpainful stimuli, a finding that led to the development, by Wall and colleague W. H. Sweet, of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), a pain therapy now widely used in a variety of acute and chronic conditions. The therapy involves the stimulation of skin above a painful area by means of electrodes. “Through publication of the gate control theory, and as a founder of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), he [Wall] has been responsible for an incredible surge of interest world-wide in pain research,” says John Bonica, Wall’s colleague and cofounder of the IASP. “And as an M.D., he is also one of the few basic scientists who has consistently explored and championed the clinical applications of research.” In the broader field of neuroscience, the three pioneers in the field of charting the brain’s anatomy— Hokfelt, Nauta, and Powell—received the first Bristol-Myers Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience Research for making “unique contributions to brain and central nervous system research.” “These three scientists have made invaluable contributions to the neurosciences,” said William R. Miller, vice chairman of Bristol-Myers Co.’s board of directors, in announcing the awards. “They have given the scientific community a better understanding of the chemical reactions, the molecular structures, and the electrical activities of the brain and central nervous system. This increased knowledge could provide important clues to finding more effective treatments for a host of neurological and psychiatric disorders.” Hokfelt, professor of histology and cell biology at the Karolinska Institute, mapped many nerve cells and their processes on the basis of the neurotransmitters that they contain. He is best known for discovering the coexistence principle, which raised the possibility that nerve cells produce, store, and release more than one messenger molecule involved in brain cell communication. He also found that peptides—chains of amino acids—often cooperate with other molecules to trigger cell-to-cell communication in the brain, a principle that helped to disprove the widely held theory that classical transmitters such as acetylcho- line, norepinephrine, and dopamine are solely responsible for nerve cell communication. Nauta, who holds the title of institute professor emeritus at MIT, is an internationally recognized authority on the circuitry of the limbic system, the part of the brain believed to control emotions. He is best known for developing a sensitive and powerful technique— known as the “Nauta stain”—to map the complex anatomic connections in the brain. This technique employs a silver stain to trace nerve fibers connecting different regions of the brain. Nauta also played a key role in developing the theory that certain nerve cell groupings are linked to parts of the brain controlling emotions, motivation, cognition, and movement. Powell, a reader in the department of human anatomy at Oxford, used the Nauta stain and other methods to determine the main connections between specific brain regions—the cerebral cortex, the basal ganglia, and the major sensory systems. By comparing differ- ent parts of the brain, he determined that each of the main sensory systems is organized along the same principles. Powell’s research has provided increased un- derstanding of Alzheimer’s disease, and his work indicates that the disease may follow the connections from the olfactory regions into the cerebral cortex. Joseph Chamberlain, director of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, has won the 1988 Klumpke-Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, given each year for outstanding contributions to the public understanding of astronomy. Chamberlain has been instrumental in forwarding the development of U.S. planetaria. The University of Michigan School of Public Health has appointed John R. Griffith to the position of chairman of the school’s health services management and policy department. Griffith is Andrew Pattullo Professor of Health Services Management and Policy. Griffith also has served as chairman of the school’s department of hospital administration for 12 years. He had served as interim chairman of his current department since 1986. Karen M. Hendry, a research engineer in the Center for Hazardous Materials Research at Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, N.C., has been awarded a $12,300 grant from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center to purchase a custom-designed, laboratory-scale wastewater bioreactor. Hendry and her RTI colleagues will use the bench-scale reactor to study the fate of specific organic compounds in an activated sludge waste treatment system. Judith H. Greenberg has been appointed director of the genetics program of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the NIH. The program was set up to fund research and research training for fundamental genetic processes and also for the mechanisms of inheritance involving health and disease. Among the program’s current areas of interest are the ways in which genetic information is transmitted and expressed, how gene expression varies within populations, and how genes direct development. Earlier this fall, Paul MacCready, creator of the first successful human-powered aircraft, and Harold Masursky, a leader in planetary exploration and the exchange of scientific information between the Soviet Union and the United States, received the 1988 National Air and Space Museum Trophy. MacCready was honored for achievements in aerospace technology, particularly his recent work with solar-powered vehicles, including the “Gossamer Penguin” and the “Solar Challenger.” He became internationally known in 1977 when his “Gossamer Condor” made the first sustained, controlled flight by a heavier-than-air craft powered solely by its pilot’s muscles. Masursky, senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz., was selected for his contributions to manned and unmanned exploration programs and his continuing interest in fostering international efforts in space research. He is currently working on selecting landing sites for the Soviet Phobos mission to Mars in cooperation with Soviet scientists.

Four Scientists Win Bristol-Myers Achievement Prizes

The Scientist Staff

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