Nitric Oxide – The Miracle Molecule

From diabetes to hypertension, cancer to drug addiction, stroke to intestinal motility, memory and learning disorders to septic shock, sunburn to anorexia, male impotence to tuberculosis, there is probably no pathological condition where nitric oxide does not play an important role. Only within the last 25 years was Nitric Oxide discovered as a product of enzymatic synthesis in mammals, there are more than 114,000 scientific papers dealing with this remarkable molecule with most of these published within the last eight years.

Our Purpose

The Nitric Oxide Society was founded in 1996 and incorporated in the State of California in order to promote the advancement of basic and applied scientific research in all aspects of nitric oxide research, to disseminate important research results to the general public concerning nitric oxide, to develop and enhance the education and training of students and researchers in this field, to foster interdisciplinary communication by convening conferences, by publishing meritorious scientific articles in the official Journal of the Society Nitric Oxide Biology and Chemistry, and by employing other appropriate methods of communication and to engage in such other conduct as shall be in furtherance of the corporation’s general and specific purposes.

History - The Nobel Prize

Three American pharmacologists were awarded the Nobel Prize on Monday for their surprising discoveries of how natural production of a gas, nitric oxide, can mediate a wide variety of bodily actions.

Those include widening blood vessels, helping to regulate blood pressure, initiating erections, battling infections, preventing formation of blood clots and acting as a signal molecule in the nervous system.

The prize, for physiology or medicine, went to Dr. Robert Furchgott, 82, of the State University of New York in Brooklyn; Dr. Louis Ignarro, 57, of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Dr. Ferid Murad, 62, of the University of Texas Medical School in Houston.

Board of Directors

Miriam Cortese-Krott
Düsseldorf, Germany

Nathan Bryan
Houston, USA

Sharon Glynn
Galway, Ireland

Motohiro Nishida
Fukuoka, Japan

Matthias Carlstrom
Stockholm, Sweden

Lorenzo Berra
Boston, USA

Hozumi Motohashi
Sendai. Japan

Advisors

Sruti Shiva, Past President
Pittsburgh, USA

Douglas Thomas, Past President
Chicago, USA

FOUNDERS:

Martin Feelish
University of Southampton, UK

Ulrich Forstermann
Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany

Steven S. Gross
Weill Cornell Medical College, USA

Louis J. Ignarro
UCLA School of Medicine, USA

Jack R. Lancaster, Jr.
University of Alabama Birmingham, USA

Salvador Moncada
University College London, UK

Jonathan S. Stamler
Case Western Reserve University, USA