Content area
Full Text
10 JANUARY 1916 * 15 AUGUST 2004
WHEN SUNE BERGSTROM died in 2004 at the age of eighty-eight, the world lost one of its greatest scientists, humanitarians, and leaders in global health. Few scientists of his distinction in basic research have so broadened their scope as to affect the health and well-being of humanity.
Bergstrom shared the 1982 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Bengt Samuelsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and John Vane of the Wellcome Laboratories in Britain for the discovery of the structures and functions of a chemical family called prostaglandins. They have many functions throughout the body.
Prostaglandins and drugs derived from them have since become widely used in birth control, abortions, controlling pain, preventing blood clots, preventing and healing peptic ulcers, and other applications-including the mechanism of action of aspirin in relieving pain.
Prostaglandins were discovered in 1936 by the eminent Swedish pharmacologist UIf von Euler, who observed their activity in seminal fluid from a variety of species, including humans. In 1945, von Euler, recognizing Bergstrom's exceptional ability, gave a sample of seminal fluid to Bergstrom, then a young biochemist at the Karolinska, and suggested he explore the prostaglandins. Bergstrom and his students purified two major forms, called prostaglandin E and prostaglandin F, and demonstrated how they are produced in the body from unsaturated fatty acids. They also discovered that the hormones are not stored but are produced by tissues throughout the body for use as needed, suggesting their pervasive importance in human physiology.
They showed that prostaglandins are hormone-like agents involved in many processes that cause inflammation after an injury or illness, affect the flexibility of blood vessels, regulate contractions of the uterus, help to clot blood, and influence other activities. However, prostaglandins differ from hormones in that they act locally, near their site of production, and are metabolized very rapidly. Another unusual feature is that the same prostaglandins act differently in different tissues.
The prostaglandins are also unusual in that they come in pairs with opposite activities. One prostaglandin, for example, causes smooth muscles to contract, while another causes them to dilate. One causes blood platelets to clot; another prevents them from clotting.
These discoveries opened the way for new approaches to heart disease, strokes,...