Introduction

Abstract

The discovery of the nitric oxide (NO) pathway in the 1980s represented a critical advance in the understanding of cell signaling and subsequently into major new advancements in many clinical areas including, but not limited to cardiovascular medicine. This seminal finding was viewed as so fundamentally important that the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to its discoverers, Drs. Louis J. Ignarro, Robert Furchgott, and Ferid Murad in 1998, a short 11 years after NO was identified. The Swedish Nobel Assembly sagely noted, “The signal transmission by a gas that is produced by one cell, penetrates through membranes and regulates the function of another cell, represents an entirely new principle for signaling in biological systems.” It was shocking to realize that NO, a colorless, odorless gas, was able to perform such important biochemical functions. Dr. Valentin Fuster, then president of the American Heart Association, noted in a 1998 interview that “the discovery of NO and its function is one of the most important in the history of cardiovascular medicine.” More than a decade after the Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of NO and after more than 100,000 scientific papers have been published on it, we still don’t have a firm grasp on its production and regulation or understand all of its biological functions.