The 1977 Nobel Prize for Radioimmunoassay

Overview

The 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was divided: half to Rosalyn Yalow "for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones" and half jointly to Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally "for their discoveries concerning the peptide hormone production of the brain."

Radioimmunoassay (RIA), developed by Yalow with her long-time collaborator Solomon Berson, combined the specificity of antibodies with the sensitivity of radioactivity to detect minute quantities of analyte in biological fluids. The original application, to insulin, revealed that many "insulin-resistant" diabetic patients harbored anti-insulin antibodies — a finding that contradicted the prevailing immunological view that small molecules could not be immunogenic. Yalow and Berson's work not only solved that clinical problem but also provided a general assay principle applicable to hormones, drugs, viruses, and other biological molecules.

Berson died in 1972, five years before the prize, and thus was ineligible. Yalow became the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (after Gerty Cori in 1947) and remains one of the few physicists to be recognized in the medicine category.

Key People

• Rosalyn Yalow (1921–2011): Co-developer of RIA and sole recipient of the RIA half of the 1977 prize.
• Solomon Berson (1918–1972): Yalow's collaborator, who did not live to share the prize.
• Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally: Co-recipients for hypothalamic peptide research.

Timeline

• 1950: Yalow and Berson begin collaboration at the Bronx VA.
• 1959: First scientific description of insulin RIA principles.
• 1960: First full-length paper on RIA for insulin.
• 1970s: RIA spreads to dozens of hormones and diagnostic contexts.
• 1977: Nobel Prize awarded.
• 1980s–2000s: RIA gradually replaced by immunometric and chemiluminescence assays.

Background

The Nobel citation recognized that RIA had transformed clinical and research endocrinology. Before RIA, most peptide hormones could not be measured in blood; their physiology had to be inferred from bioassays or from measurements in extracted tissues. After RIA, clinicians could quantify TSH, LH, FSH, growth hormone, and many others directly, revolutionizing the diagnosis of endocrine disease.

The linked award to Guillemin and Schally reflected the complementary nature of their work: RIA had made possible the tracking of hypothalamic peptides during purification. Without RIA (or closely analogous assays), the identification of TRH, GnRH, and somatostatin at trace levels in tissue extracts would have been all but impossible.

Modern Relevance

Modern immunoassays — ELISA, immunoradiometric assays, electrochemiluminescence, and bead-based multiplex platforms — are direct descendants of RIA. Virtually every clinical measurement of a hormone, tumor marker, or therapeutic drug in serum uses a variant of the principles Yalow and Berson introduced.

The 1977 Nobel Prize also remains a touchstone for women in science. Yalow was an outspoken advocate for female scientists and, in her Nobel banquet speech, emphasized the need to ensure that young women had the support and expectations required to succeed in research. For more, see rosalyn-yalow, first-radioimmunoassay, and elisa-method.

Related Compounds

• Insulin
• Growth hormone
• ACTH
• TRH
• Somatostatin