UB's Levy to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Gerhard Levy, Ph.D., distinguished professor of pharmaceutics in the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy, will travel to Lisbon, Portugal, to receive the 1994 International Lifetime Achievement in the Pharmaceutical Sciences Award from the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) for Education and Research.

A UB faculty member since 1958, Levy's research has focused on drug absorption, distribution, excretion and metabolism (pharmacokinetics), including studies on placental drug transfer from mother to fetus in pregnancy and the disposition of medicinal agents in children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and thyroid disorders. He has studied the relationship between the dosage regimen of therapeutic agents, their concentration in the blood and the time course of their therapeutic effect in various disease states.

In the early 1960s, Levy and his students developed the dissolution test procedure now used by the pharmaceutical industry and government agencies as a quality-control method to safeguard the proper absorption of the medicinal ingredients of tablets and capsules. His subsequent research on the pharmacokinetics of aspirin constituted a major breakthrough in the safe and effective use of this drug in the treatment of inflammatory diseases, particularly in children.

Levy has received numerous honors in the pharmaceutical sciences, including FIP's Host-Madsen Gold Medal, the organization's premier award in the scientific field. He also has received the Ebert Prize and the Research Achievement Award of the American Pharmaceutical Association, the McKeen Cattel Distinguished Achievement Award in Clinical Pharmacology of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology and the American Society for Pharmacology and Therapeutics' Oscar Hunter Award for Outstanding Achievement in Experimental Therapeutics.

The author or co-author of more than 500 research articles, Levy will donate the prize money included with the FIP Achievement Award to the Buffalo Pharmaceutics Scholar Fund, which he established with the proceeds of previous scientific awards to recognize outstanding graduate students in the UB Department of Pharmaceutics.

He resides in Buffalo.