Efforts and success world-wide in the field of clinical pharmacology

Abstract

In this personal review I describe my early expectations and experiences when I first came to work with Prof. Folke Sjöqvist as a training fellow in the early 1970s. At that time Prof. Sjöqvist and his unit had already earned an international reputation, and in the following decades this success has been magnified many times. Although a description of the research performed by Prof. Sjöqvist during his long career is not the main objective of this article, it is clear that the research carried out in his unit has been instrumental in the development of his international reputation. Over an 18-year period from 1994 onwards, some 272 papers bearing the name of Folke Sjöqvist have been cited over 13,000 times, with an average of over 50 citations per paper. In terms of training clinical pharmacologists from around the world, at the last count 112 individuals from 37 different countries have received a substantial part of their training in his unit. As another measure of his world-wide success, 33 individuals from 18 different countries who received a substantial part of their training in his unit between 1968 and 1996 have gone on to become professors of clinical pharmacology. Prof. Sjöqvist has been requested to consult on various aspects of clinical pharmacology in 15 different countries, from Russia to Spain and from Egypt to Latvia. Here I describe the long-term involvement that Prof. Sjöqvist has had with IUPHAR (now the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology) and with institutions such as the World Health Organisation (WHO). In particular, I recount his role in the long-term saga involved in updating the original WHO manifesto on clinical pharmacology published in 1970 up to the eventual success of the new manifesto published by WHO in 2012. Finally, I briefly describe the international honours that have been bestowed on Prof. Sjöqvist, including various prizes, designated lectureships and honorary Doctorates (5). Taken together, these honours provide a magnificent measure of Prof. Sjöqvist's world wide-success-a success that has been emulated by very few clinical pharmacologists.