Council Honorees and the Nobel Prize

Last month we began a new feature in celebration of our 20th anniversary of Hypertension.In this feature we are pleased to salute once again those special honorees and lecturers of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research (CHBPR) who later received Nobel Prize recognition for their seminal research achievement that had been recognized by the Council. Each of these individuals either had been selected as a recipient of the Stouffer, Ciba, or Novartis Awards or was a featured speaker invited to present the Corcoran or other important special Council lectures. Then, sometime following that acknowledgment, they were recognized further by selection of the Nobel Selection Committee to receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their outstanding work. In this month’s issue we honor Doctors Sune Bergstro ̈m, Bengt Samuelsson, and Sir John Vane. It was in 1974 that Doctor John Vane, of the Wellcome Research Center, summarized his important work on prostaglandin synthesis at the annual Council meeting. In 1981, Doctor Bengt Samuelsson, of the Karolı̈nska Institute, presented the Corcoran Lecture on his work concerning prostaglandins. One year later, in 1982, Doctors Bengt Samuelsson, Sune Bergström (who was then retired from the Karolı̈nska Institute), and Sir John Vane were jointly honored for their isolation, identification, and analysis of numerous prostaglandins; how they influence blood presure, body temperature, allergic reactions, and other physiological and pharmacological phenomena. Doctor Bergstro ̈m, Doctor Samuelsson’s mentor, was the first to demonstrate the existence of more than one such compound and to determine the elemental compositions of them. Doctor Samuelsson was the first to describe the metabolic sequence of prostaglandin formation. Sir John Vane was selected for his many studies, among which he demonstrated that aspirin inhibits prostaglandin synthesis in the formation of prostaglandins, thereby providing one physiological rationale for the effectiveness of the world’s most widely used drug. Hypertension is delighted to highlight this month their contributions and accomplishments in elucidating the importance of the prostaglandins in health and disease.