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Bengt Ingemar Samuelsson is a Swedish biochemist.
He was born in Halmstad in southwest Sweden and studied at Stockholm University, where he became a professor in 1967. He shared with Sune K. Bergström and John R. Vane the 1982 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning prostaglandins and related substances. In 1975, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Sune K. Bergström. Discussing the role of prostaglandins in the body, Samuelsson explained, "It's a control system for the cells that participates in many biological functions. There are endless possibilities of manipulating this system in drug development."
His research interests were originally in cholesterol metabolism with importance to reaction mechanisms. Following the structural work on prostaglandins along with Sune Bergström he was interested mainly in the transformation products of arachidonic acid. This has led to the identification of endoperoxides, thromboxanes and the leukotrienes, and his group has chiefly been involved in studying the chemistry, biochemistry and biology of these compounds and their function in biological control systems. This research has implications in numerous clinical areas, especially in thrombosis, inflammation, and allergy.
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