Narcolepsy researchers win Lasker prize for orexin work

Emmanuel Mignot of France and Masashi Yanagisawa of Japan won an Albert Lasker prize on Wednesday for research that helped uncover the cause of narcolepsy.

Their work in the 1990s pointed to orexin, also called hypocretin, a chemical made in the hypothalamus that helps regulate wakefulness. In people and mice with narcolepsy, orexin is absent. In dogs with hereditary narcolepsy, orexin is present but cannot work properly because of a genetic mutation affecting its receptor.

The findings helped move sleep science into genetics and molecular biology and opened paths to treatment. A drug targeting orexin deficiency in Type 1 narcolepsy was approved this year in the United States, China and Japan.

Mignot, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, told AFP that some of his patients improved dramatically after treatment. Yanagisawa, affiliated with Tsukuba University in Japan, said drugs that block orexin's wakefulness effect have also emerged for people with insomnia.

Researchers still do not fully understand why people with narcolepsy lack orexin or why strong emotions can trigger sudden sleep episodes. Mignot is investigating whether the loss of orexin is caused by an immune-system attack linked to the flu virus.