Mikko Hallman – A Major Translator of Basic Science into Neonatal Medicine

By the late 1970s, studies on lung maturity and prediction of RDS led him to propose that the large surfactant pool in amniotic fluid from term pregnancies could be harvested, tested and given to preterm infants at risk of RDS [5] . This concept had already been discarded by John Clements and colleagues, who used nebulized saturated Mikko Hallman was born in 1945 in Helsinki where he grew up in a family of five children. His father Niilo, who died in January 2011, was the very well-respected Chairman and Chief of Pediatrics at Helsinki University from 1957 to 1983 [1] . Mikko spent a lot of his childhood within or immersed in the work of the Children’s Hospital. In 1970, he graduated in medicine at Helsinki University and continued his studies in the Department of Medical Chemistry, University of Helsinki. In 1972, he defended his doctoral thesis on ‘Perinatal development of mitochondrial oxidative enzymes’ and decided to specialize in pediatrics. During early residency, he studied lung surfactant and obtained the Fogarty fellowship for neonatal studies with Louis Gluck in San Diego from 1973 to 1975. After this, Mikko completed his education in pediatrics and neonatology in Helsinki, and returned to San Diego from 1979 to 1983 as an Assistant/Associate Professor of Pediatrics. Previous experience in basic research allowed him to define the minor surfactant phospholipids for the first time in the mid-1970s. He expanded these studies to ontogeny, surface activity, turnover and recycling of surfactant phospholipids, and determined the relationship of the new surfactant indices to risk of respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) [2, 3] and later to ARDS. Mikko discovered that myoinositol alters the metabolism of acidic surfactant phospholipids and how it influences differentiation [4] . Published online: October 3, 2011