STAT is co-publishing this with Undark. This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
In 1975, in a medical school classroom in what was then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Predrag Sikiric had an idea that he has pursued for more than 50 years.
His obsessive quest would take him from gastroenterology clinics to international scientific conferences, define his career as an academic, and capture the attention of global pharmaceutical companies. It would eventually become one part of the Make America Healthy Again movement’s effort to reform federal drug regulation.
But at the time, Sikiric was just a second-year medical student at the University of Zagreb School of Medicine in Croatia, listening to a lecture about the adrenal glands and the body’s response to stress. Overwhelming stress, he knew, could damage the lining of the stomach. Surely, he thought, the stomach itself must produce a substance that allows the body to fight back — a sort of anti-stress chemical. It would be natural and free of side effects, he imagined. If someone could find it, they would have their hands on a remarkable medication.
The idea was lofty. To many scientists, he acknowledges, it still sounds impossible. Yet eight years later, at the outset of his Ph.D., Sikiric managed to inspire a small band of colleagues to join him in the search for this hypothetical compound, which he dubbed Substancija Boze Pomozi, or, roughly, “substance God help me.”
