Scientists Discovering Migraine Mechanisms Win £ 1.1m Brain Award | Neuroscience

The four scientists, who discovered an important mechanism that causes migraine headaches and paves the way for new preventative treatments, shared £ 1.1 million and won the world’s largest neuroscience award.

Lundbeck Foundation Denmark On Thursday, British researchers Peter Goesby, Michael Moskowitz of the United States, Lars Edvinsson of Sweden, and Jess Olsen Denmark Won the Brain Award.

Prior to the announcement, Goesby, a professor of neurology at King’s College London, said at a press conference: “Migraine research won this award, and migraine (the problem of this disorder, which is a brain disorder) was recognized in a proper way.”

Officially known as the Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Award, this annual award recognizes highly original and influential progress in all areas of brain research. The award ceremony will take place on October 25th in Copenhagen. The prize will be presented by Prince Frederik of Denmark.

The award-winning research revolves around revealing the neural basis of migraine. Migraine is a catastrophic neurological condition characterized by episodes of throbbing headaches, as well as extreme hypersensitivity to nausea, vomiting, dizziness, sound, light, touch and smell.Affect 1 in 7 People around the world, about three times more common in women than in men. In the UK, migraine headaches are estimated to lose 25 million working or school days each year at an economic cost of £ 2.3 billion.

For many years, migraine headaches have been thought to be psychosomatic disorders caused by people’s inability to cope with stress. Treatments were available, but they did not address the unknown root cause, but only helped to relieve the symptoms.

In 1979, Moskowitz, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, said that migraine is a mutual interaction between the trigeminal nerve, which is involved in the detection of sensations from the head and face, and the thin, pain-sensitive “meninges” around it. Proposed to be due to action. brain. He showed that migraine attacks occur when trigeminal nerve fibers release chemicals called neuropeptides that dilate blood vessels in the meninges, causing inflammation and pain. He suggested that blocking the action of these neuropeptides could provide a new type of treatment.

When Goadsby, along with Edvinsson, professor of internal medicine at Lund University in Sweden and chairman of the International Headache Society, identified the major neuropeptide involved in inducing these attacks, the calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), another Breakthrough has occurred.

Further studies by Olesen have shown that when CGRP is given to patients with migraine, it can cause seizures and drugs that block neuropeptides may help treat migraine. In 2004, he and his team published the results of a large clinical trial suggesting that such “CGRP antagonists” would be effective in the acute treatment of migraine attacks.

This has led to the development of new therapies, including monoclonal antibody-based drugs such as: ElenumabCurrently available in the United Kingdom, the small molecule drugs Limegepant and Ubrogepant are still only available in the United States... Although these drugs do not cure migraine headaches, they significantly improve the quality of life of many patients and help both treat and prevent migraine attacks.

Goesby said: “The key to this study is to show that a neuroscience-based approach is valuable and that the combination of bench and bedside studies can change clinical practice. Life with these drugs. I’m sick of emails from patients who have changed. We haven’t changed all of them, we’re just getting started, but this study shows that migraine is a tricky problem. is.”