The scientist who just wanted to know for knowing and ended giving rise to 13% of all drugs
If a person concentrates on how he bends the index finger of his right hand, he can easily imagine the three phalanges of bone, perfectly synchronized to the rhythm marked by the flexor and extensor muscles. But if you concentrate a little more and sink mentally into your own finger, it will reach the cells of your nerves and muscles. There, the signal to move the finger travels in millionths of a second thanks to the transit of electrically charged atoms through the membranes of the cells that form living beings. Almost 40 years ago, two thirty-year-old Germans – passionate about basic science, for the mere fact of knowing for the sake of knowing – decided to investigate these electrical messages. And they developed a new method to measure these tiny currents that allowed them to detect the gates of the cell: ion channels, molecules in the cell membrane that allow the passage of charged atoms. In 1991, those two young men,Erwin Neherand Bert Sakmann, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for this momentous discovery. His curiosity ended up saving thousands of lives.
"Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing," he says.an attributed phraseengineer Wernher von Braun, father of the space program that took humans to the moon. Erwin Neher, born in Landsberg (Germany) in 1944, did not know what he was doing either. Four decades later, he does know. Their new method made it possible to identify cell gates that became targets for drug development. Memantine, one of the most widely used drugs to treat the symptoms of Alzheimer's, acts on an ion channel linked to neuronal connections. Several drugs relieve chronic pain with the same strategy. And one of the most expensive drugs in the world, Kalydeco, with a cost of more than 200,000 euros per patient per year, slows cystic fibrosis in a small percentage of sick children, thanks to ion channels. Without these tablets, the pathology causes the accumulation of thick mucus in the lungs and usually ends with a premature death of patients.
Neher, researcherof the Max Planck Society, hurries aGin and tonicwhile listing examples of drugs that emerged thanks to his research, one after another. "I feel very proud," he admits. It is estimated that13% of all medicines marketedact on ion channels, with sales ofMore than 10,000 million eurosper year. The German biophysicist, passing through Valencia to participate as a jury in the Rey Jaime I Awards, smiles and explains why it is necessary to invest more money in basic research. In knowing for knowing's sake.
