Albert Lasker
Basic Medical Research Award

Acceptance Remarks by Bengt Samuelsson

This year the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award is honoring prostaglandin and thromboxane research. It is a great honor and privilege for me to accept the award.

I am particularly pleased to share this award with Sune Bergström and John Vane. I got my initial training as a graduate student with Sune Bergström and, subsequently, had a most rewarding collaboration with him concerning the structure of the prostaglandins. John Vane and I have, over the past few years, had an extensive and very pleasant exchange of ideas and results and used methods developed in each of the two laboratories.

I would also like to acknowledge my debt to E.J. Corey, with whom I spent a most profitable post-doctoral year in the chemistry department at Harvard University. This stay in Corey's laboratory had a profound influence on the direction of my scientific world.

Although this award is given to individuals, I must emphasize that science is a communal effort. What we have accomplished has rested on the achievements of those who preceded us, and the results from my own laboratory are due to devoted and intelligent work by many individuals from several countries. I would also like to acknowledge the important contributions of the institutions that have generously supported our research. In this context, it always gives me great pleasure to see basic research being recognized, since this is a prerequisite for advances in many different areas and it requires a fair support.

The recognition today indicates that our area of research has reached a certain degree of maturity. However, we have just obtained the tools for further exploration of this field of research, especially in the direction of physiology, disease processes, and therapeutics. I expect that prostaglandin and thromboxane research will also in the future provide many joyful moments for the discoverers and produce results which will benefit mankind.