Tore Curstedt - the basic science creator of porcine surfactant.

In 1980, two exceptional scientists met for the first time when they were both working at the Karolinska Institutet. Tore Curstedt and Bengt Robertson began their extraordinarily successful and long-lasting collaboration to develop a high-quality surfactant preparation, which could be produced in a reproducible way in large quantiTore Curstedt was born as an only child in 1946 in Piteå, a small town in the north of Sweden, about 800 km from Stockholm. He went to school in his hometown and in 1965 he moved to Stockholm for medical studies at the Karolinska Institutet. He started his research career in the Department of Medical and Physiological Chemistry at the Karolinska Institutet where, in 1974, he defended his doctoral thesis on Biosynthesis of Molecular Species of Phosphatidyl Cholines during Metabolism of [1,12 H 2 ] Ethanol. His main project was to develop methods in order to follow the deuterium transfer from deuterated ethanol to acyl residues and to different positions of the glycerol moieties of individual molecular species of each phospholipid class [1–3] . New methods for the isolation and separation of phospholipids were developed, and the turnover of the individual molecular species of different phospholipid classes in tissues, bile and plasma was determined. In 1975, Tore became Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Medical Chemistry at the Karolinska Institutet. Five years later, he decided to become a laboratory doctor and moved to the Department of Clinical Chemistry at the Karolinska University Hospital but with his research group still belonging to the Karolinska Institutet. In 2004, Tore Curstedt was appointed Assistant Director with responsibility for the Karolinska University Laboratory, which is the largest clinical laboratory in northern Europe. He retired from that position last year but is still active in research. Published online: October 5, 2014