American and Japanese scientists have won a U.S. Breakthrough Prize for their discoveries shedding light on the cause of narcolepsy, a sleep disorder that makes people suddenly drowsy in the daytime. One of the $3 million prizes in life sciences went to Emmanuel Mignot of the Stanford University School of Medicine and Masashi Yanagisawa of the University of Tsukuba for their separate research programs that have contributed to the creation of sleep-inducing drugs, the organizers said Thursday. In the 1990s, Yanagasawa discovered orexin, a protein in the brain, and determined it helps maintain awakeness through experiments using mice. The findings led to the development of sleeping drugs. The researchers will share the prize money. . . .
Read more at english.kyodonews.net