UB Pharmaceutics Chair Receives Top Japanese Award

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Ho-Leung Fung, Ph.D., professor and chair in the department of pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy at the University at Buffalo, has been awarded the prestigious Takeru and Aya Higuchi Memorial Award from the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology in Japan.

Fung accepted the award last week at the National Meeting of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology in Kobe.

The award is presented biennially to a top non-Japanese researcher who has made significant contributions to the pharmaceutical sciences and to international pharmaceutical education.

Fung is recognized as one of the world's leading investigators in the area of nitrovasodilator pharmacology and biochemistry. He was one of the first to advance simple measurements of vasomotor responses to more in-depth studies of cellular and vascular biochemistry. His research, which is focused on the medicinal properties of nitroglycerin and related compounds, has application to new treatments of angina and other cardiovascular diseases, and erectile disorders.

A UB faculty member since 1970, Fung has been chair of the Department of Pharmaceutics since 1980. He recently was elected president of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists for 1996.

One of a few recipients of a MERIT award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, Fung in 1988 received the Research Achievement Award in Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics and Drug Metabolism from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists and the American Pharmaceutical Association Research Achievement Award in Pharmacodynamics in 1992.

Fung is an elected fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences. He has served as a member of the National Institutes of Health Pharmacology study section, and was recently appointed chair of the Pharmacological Sciences Review Committee of the National Institute for General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health.

Fung lives in Amherst.