Dr. Bengt Samuelsson, a biochemist who shared the 1982 Nobel Prize in Medicine for helping to define the biological activities of powerful hormone-like molecules called prostaglandins, and whose groundbreaking discoveries led to the development of drugs to treat inflammation, glaucoma and allergies, died July 5 at his home in Molle, on Sweden’s west coast. He was 90.
His daughter Astrid Samuelsson Norhammar said the cause was heart disease.
Dr. Samuelsson has discovered several lipid mediators, or molecules, that include prostaglandins and several related subtypes of these substances, all of which play essential roles in the body’s organs and tissues. Some cause uterine contractions, regulate blood pressure and body temperature, and trigger inflammation; others play important roles in blood clotting, asthma, allergies, kidney stones, and gallstones.
Dr. Samuelsson began his research on prostaglandins and related molecules in the early 1960s at the Karolinska Institute, a renowned medical university in Stockholm. But the field itself had begun decades earlier, in the 1930s, also at the institute.
Dr. Ulf von Euler was the first to discover biologically active lipid molecules in sperm, which he named prostaglandins on the assumption that these molecules were specific to the prostate. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970.
Dr. Samuelsson would later prove that dozens of these molecules exist and that they play important roles in health, disease and injury.
The rigor, creativity and curiosity that Dr. Samuelsson demonstrated in his research made him a role model for generations of scientists.
“Very few scientists can open up an entirely new field of knowledge. But that is what Bengt Samuelsson has done,” said Dr. Goran Hansson, professor of experimental cardiovascular research at Karolinska Institutet and secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology and Medicine, in a statement.
Dr. Samuelsson shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1982 with Dr. Sune Bergstrom, also of the Karolinska Institute, and Dr. John R. Vane, a British pharmacologist, of the Wellcome Research Foundation in London. Each was honored by the Nobel Committee for different aspects of prostaglandin research.
Dr. Samuelsson was recognized for his in-depth analysis of arachidonic acid, the fatty acid needed to produce prostaglandins, for defining how the body processes prostaglandins, and for discovering several subtypes of prostaglandins.
Dr. Bergstrom, who was Dr. Samuelsson’s mentor and introduced him to prostaglandin research, is credited with purifying many prostaglandins and defining their chemical structures.
Dr. Vane is credited with proving that aspirin blocks the activity of prostaglandins. His discovery helped explain why the over-the-counter drug aspirin inhibits pain and fever: it suppresses the prostaglandins that cause both symptoms.
Dr. Bergstrom and Dr. Vane both died in 2004.
“During the 1980s and 1990s, he and his associates successfully advanced the entire field of research from early physiological observations to the molecular era with gene cloning and advanced protein and enzyme biochemistry,” said Dr. Jesper Z. Haeggstrom, head of the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at Karolinska Institutet; he was the last PhD student to be supervised by Dr. Samuelsson.
These technological advances have allowed Dr. Samuelsson and his team to better define the full range of prostaglandins and related molecules present in the body. He has discovered signaling molecules called leukotrienes, derived from white blood cells, which are essential for intercellular communication.
“He mapped a whole biochemical continent of signaling molecules in the human body and discovered that they are of great importance in the bloodstream, the respiratory system, the genitals, the immune system, the nervous system and almost the entire body,” said Dr. Hansson of Karolinska Institutet.
In a statement, Dr. Annika Ostman Wernerson, president of the institute, noted that Dr. Samuelsson “has made significant contributions to the field of research he founded.”
Bengt Ingemar Samuelsson was born on 21 May 1934 in Halmstad, Sweden. He was the youngest of three children (and the only son) of Anders and Kristina (Nilsson) Samuelsson. His father was a shopkeeper in Halmstad and his mother was a homemaker.
Dr. Samuelsson attended public school in Halmstad before enrolling at Lund University to study medicine. It was there that he met two people who changed his future: Karin Bergstein, who became his wife in 1958, and Dr. Bergstrom, who taught in Lund before taking a professorship at Karolinska Institutet, and who convinced Dr. Samuelsson to continue his studies there.
Dr. Samuelsson received a doctorate in biochemistry from the institute in 1960 and a medical degree in 1961.
He became a professor there in 1973 and was later appointed dean of the medical faculty before becoming president of the institute from 1982 to 1995. He was president of the Nobel Foundation from 1993 to 2005.
Besides his daughter Astrid, Dr Samuelsson is survived by his wife, a physician, his son Bo Samuelsson, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Elisabet Samuelsson, died in 1996.
In 2019, during his speech at the annual Prix Galien USA awards ceremony in Manhattan, recognizing advances in the biopharmaceutical industry, Dr. Samuelsson spoke about basic scientific research as key to drug development.
He explained how basic science underpins the drug manufacturing process, from bench to bedside, the translation of theory to therapeutics. “It is important to emphasize that without basic research, there is no translational research and no clinical development,” he said.
Dr Samuelsson, said Dr Haeggstrom, “has demonstrated the immense importance of curiosity-driven fundamental research.” He added: “I am pleased and proud to be part of Bengt Samuelsson’s extraordinary and exciting scientific journey.”