Work just beginning as drugmakers put Nobel discoveries to test

* Hundreds of receptors are targets for drug discovery

* Goal is to make better drugs with fewer side effects

* Potential to treat a vast array of diseases

By Julie Steenhuysen and Ben Hirschler

CHICAGO/LONDON, Oct (KOSDAQ: 039200.KQ - news) 10 (Reuters) - For some scientists, winning a Nobel Prize marks the end of a long and successful career.

But the work, in a sense, is just beginning for newly minted Nobel laureates in chemistry Dr. Brian Kobilka, 57, of Stanford University in California, and his mentor, Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, 69, of Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.

"There is still a lot to do," Kobilka said in a telephone interview from his home in Palo Alto, California, where he learned of his prize early on Wednesday morning. "There is a lot to do."

In research spanning four decades, the scientists working separately and together have helped to characterize the exact structure of an important class of proteins known as G-protein-coupled receptors or GPCRs, which serve as a main conduit for chemicals to get past a cell's membrane and be taken up by a cell.

Roughly 1,000 human genes carry genetic codes for the receptors, which affect a variety of functions, from the beating of the heart to the workings of the brain and even how cells in the nose detect odors.

A subset of these receptors, some several hundred, respond to hormones and neurotransmitters in the body, and these have been targets for drug discovery, in many cases even before researchers knew these receptors existed.

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Work just beginning as drugmakers put Nobel discoveries to test