The story

Marcel Monnier and Guido Schoenenberger in Basel, Switzerland, stimulated the thalamus of rabbits to make them sleep, took their blood, and found a factor that put other rabbits into deep sleep. They isolated and sequenced it in 1977. Through the 1980s Abba Kastin's group in New Orleans mapped its wide effects on stress hormones and pain. Russia carried the work further: Kovalzon's group at the Severtsov Institute in Moscow studied its sleep effects, and the drug Deltaran was developed for stress and withdrawal. Russian neurologists used Deltaran with Semax after ischemic stroke to restore attention, memory and speech.