Media Advisory: "Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals: A Global Problem Come Home" is Topic of Pharmacy Keynote Address at UB

BUFFALO, N.Y. Steven Sutton, PhD, a 1983 graduate of the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, will discuss the international security threat posed by counterfeit pharmaceuticals at an address to be held at 7 p.m. on Sept. 16 in 121 Cooke Hall on UB's North Campus.

His talk, "Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals: A Global Problem Come Home," is the keynote address in the UB pharmacy school's 125th anniversary celebration, "125 Years of Discovery, Change and Progression," and includes a series of educational and social events being held through Sept. 18.

Sutton's talk is free and open to the public.

In 2010, there were 1,700 incidents of counterfeit pharmaceuticals reported worldwide, triple the number in 2004. Estimates of the fake drug market are between $75 billion and $200 billion per year. What started as an intellectual property concern became a public health crisis and is now a threat to international security.

Sutton will discuss the problems counterfeit drugs pose to the world's medical supply and the need for pharmacists and pharmacy students to educate consumers of the dangers of using unregulated drugs.

Sutton is an associate professor at the University of New England's College of Pharmacy.

Founded in 1886, the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences was UB's second official school, the only pharmacy school in the State University of New York system and a nationally ranked leader in academic health care. It is considered the birthplace of academic biopharmaceutics, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, beginning with the pharmacokinetics research and theoretical principles of groundbreaking UB professor Eino Nelson in the 1960s, to the work of UB Distinguished Emeritus Professor Gerhard Levy, widely considered the "father of pharmacodynamics."

Press arrangements: Becky Brierley at 645-6965 and onsite.