The Prostaglandins: From the Laboratory to the Clinic (Nobel Lecture)

The chemistry and biochemistry of the prostaglandins are now described in textbooks, and I have reviewed the early work several times (l-4). I will instead discuss the background of the early prostaglandin work here in Sweden and also some recent developments in the clinical fields that I have been associated with. Now let me digress for a moment. My scientific work started with Dr Erik Jorpes in 1934 when I participated in his early heparin work. He is more responsible than anybody else for purifying heparin and introducing it as a drug into the clinic. At that time Professor Einar Hammarsten was Director of the Chemistry Department at the Karolinska, then one of the leading laboratories in the world also in the field of nucleic acids and of peptide hormones, i.e. secretin and cholecystokinine. Dr Jorpes always maintained that it was too bad that nobody worked on lipids or steroids in Sweden. He financed a trip for me to England in 1938 where I spent a few months working on bile acids with Dr G.A.D. Haslewood at Hammersmith Postgraduate Medical School. The following year I got a fellowship from the British Council to work for a year at Dr Marrian’s laboratory in Edinburgh. It was cancelled when the war broke out, but I was then lucky enough to get a Swedish American Fellowship and worked for a year and a half at Columbia University and at the Squibb Institute with Dr Oskar Wintersteiner on cholesterol autoxidation 1940-1942. After returning home I started working on the autoxidation of linoleic acid and identified the structure of the main reaction products. It was found that a conjugation of the double bonds took place and that oxygen was introduced as an hydroperoxide group at carbon atoms 9 or 13. I also found that the lipoxygenase enzyme of soy beans, just described by Dr Sumner, yielded the same products as the heavy metal catalyzed autoxidation. At that time I was working in Dr Hugo Theorell’s laboratory, and we started to cooperate on the purification of the soy bean lipoxygenase enzyme. My involvement with the prostaglandins started at the Meeting of the Physiological Society of Karolinska Institutet, October 19th, 1945 where I reported on my work on the oxidation of linoleic acid. Dr Hugo Theorell was chairman, Dr Yngve Zotterman secretary and Dr Ulf von Euler signed the minutes of the meeting.