Progress in Hormone Biochemistry and Pharmacology

Somatostatin was discovered in 1971, by Guillemin and his colleagues during their search for the hypothalamic growth hormone-releasing factor. A peptide was found in ovine hypothalamus which inhibited the release of growth hormone from cultured anterior pituitary cells. 1,2 Determination 3 of its amino acid sequence indicated that it was a tetradecapeptide with a molecular weight of 1639 (Figure lJ. An identical peptide was later isolated from porcine hypothalamus by Schally and his coworke...