On the history of the development of Sephadex^®

Summary

The creative and stimulating atmosphere in the laboratories of The Svedberg and Arne Tiselius in the Departments of Physical Chemistry and Biochemistry of Uppsala University during the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's, was a nursery for a remarkable set of both academic and industrial advances. Their pupils were to become distinguished professors at Swedish Universities, as well as abroad, and they were directly involved in the development of two successful Swedish industries, LKB-produkter AB in Stockholm and Pharmacia AB in Uppsala. This review describes the preconditions and the events which led to the development of one of the first commercially available biochemical separation products, the gel filtration medium Sephadex which was introduced by Pharmacia AB in 1959. All the necessary components of a successful transfer of academic research to industrial product development were at hand: a scientific culture of common origin and a longstanding tradition in methodological research; mutual understanding and respect combined with informal links not only between the scientists involved but also between the president of the company and the university authorities. So far, 49 products (excluding those intended for use in health care and diagnostics) have been developed based on the epichlorohydrin cross-linked dextran gel Sephadex.