The Prize Committee for Medicine has unanimously decided that the Wolf Prize for 1994/5 jointly awarded to:
Michael J. Berridge
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, United Kingdom
Yasutomi Nishizuka
Kobe University School of Medicine
Kobe, Japan
for their discoveries concerning cellular transmembrane signalling involving phospholipids and calcium.
Working independently, Professors Berridge and Nishizuka have dramatically advanced our understanding of signal transduction cascades that regulate a wide variety of cellular processes, including secretion, fertilization, cellular growth and differentiation, and information processing in the brain.
Michael Berridge’s major achievement is the discovery of a novel, lipid-derived mediator of cell signalling, inositol trisphosphate, and its role in regulating intracellular calcium. This ubiquitous signalling system is involved in a wide variety of physiological processes. Berridge´s discovery has opened many new avenues of inquiry: the regulation of intracellular calcium, the metabolism and activities of inositol phosphates, the role of lipids in cell signalling, and the coupling of signalling agents to inositol phosphate formation. It thus ranks as one of the key contributions to understanding a fundamental property of living cells, their response to environmental signals.
Yasutomi Nishizuka discovered the protein kinase C family and its activation by extracellular signalling agents via the breakdown of membrane hospholipids. Through meticulous enzymological studies Nishizuka and his colleagues demonstrated that protein kinase C is activated by diacylglycerol and calcium. Work fromhis laboratory and subsequently from many other laboratories has established that the enzymes in the protein kinase C family are involved in a wide variety of cellular processes. Protein kinase C also mediates certain pathological conditions, such as the promotion of tumours by phorbol esters. It is thus another of the fundamental mediators of cellular responses to environmental signals.