Fung Named Editor-in-Chief of The AAPS Journal

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Ho-Leung Fung, professor and chair emeritus in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, has been named the editor-in-chief of The AAPS Journal.

A free-access, official online publication of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS), the journal features peer-reviewed and invited articles on all aspects of pharmaceutical sciences, including drug discovery, development and therapy.

Fung, a former AAPS president, said the organization has a membership of more than 12,000 "that is international in nature, and the association has been committed to the dissemination of scientific information without charging the scientific community, especially in the developing world." PubMed/Medline, Index Medicus and other publication databases index The AAPS Journal.

"One of the exciting things is that as an Internet-only journal, it is not restricted by the number of pages, there are no space limitations, and there are no photographic and video limitations, so in principle, the papers it publishes could be interactive in nature," Fung said.

He said the journal has several themed issues planned, including one next month on a controversy concerning whether a thyroid drug's approved generic versions are, in fact, biologically equivalent.

"The issue of generic equivalency is not well understood by the physicians and certainly not by the general public," Fung said.

Fung has published more than 200 articles on the bioanalysis, drug delivery, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of nitric oxide donors and nitric oxide synthase inhibitors. Currently funded on two research projects from the National Institutes of Health, he has received numerous awards for his research, including an NIH MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) grant award, research achievement awards from the AAPS and the American Pharmaceutical Association, and the Takeru and Aya Higuchi Award from the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology in Japan.

Fung, who serves as faculty advisor for UB's AAPS student chapter, also is a fellow of the AAPS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Academy of Pharmaceutical

Sciences. He has been a member of the NIH Pharmacology Study Section and chair and member of the NIGMS Pharmacological Sciences Review Committee.

He received his undergraduate pharmacy training at the Victorian College of Pharmacy in Australia and his doctorate in analytical pharmaceutical chemistry and pharmaceutics from the University of Kansas.

A native of Hong Kong, Fung lives in Getzville.