Michael J. Berridge
Wolf Prize Laureate in Medicine 1994/5
Michael J. Berridge
Affiliation at the time of the award:
University of Cambridge, UK
Award citation:
“for their discoveries concerning cellular transmembrane signalling involving phospholipids and calcium”.
Prize share:
Michael J. Berridge
Yasutomi Nishizuka
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.