BCPT Nordic Prize in Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology for 2011 to Pertti J. Neuvonen

Abstract

The BCPT Nordic Prize of 10,000 € in Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology for 2011 will be awarded to Professor Pertti J. Neuvonen from the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Professor Pertti J. Neuvonen has dedicated his working life for the benefit of basic and clinical pharmacology and toxicology. His main positions have been Lecturer or Acting Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Helsinki (1972–1988), Professor and Chairman of Pharmacology at the University of Turku (1988–1992) and Professor and Chairman of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Helsinki (1992–present). Pertti J. Neuvonen is widely recognized for his outstanding contributions in the field of drug interactions. During his early career, he was interested especially in drug absorption and gained an international reputation already in the 1970s for characterizing the clinically important interactions of tetracyclines with iron and other bivalent cations. His studies on oral activated charcoal in the 1970s and 1980s consolidated his reputation and played a central role in the expansion of the use of activated charcoal in the treatment of acute poisonings during the 1990s. For his studies on drug absorption and activated charcoal, he was selected as Drug Absorption Foundation Lecturer in 1993 (Edinburgh, UK). In the early 1990s, Pertti J. Neuvonen focused his research efforts on the roles of inhibition and induction of cytochrome P450 enzymes in drug interactions. He was the first to demonstrate that plasma concentrations of drugs undergoing extensive first-pass metabolism may increase even more than 10-fold, as a result of inhibition of P450-mediated biotransformation. In recent years, he has also been heavily engaged in pharmacogenetics and genomics research. His findings have significantly improved the safety and efficacy of drug therapy and benefited the principles and guidelines applied in drug development. Pertti J. Neuvonen has published about 460 original articles and more than 150 review articles and chapters in textbooks. The high number of citations to his articles reflects the outstanding scientific quality of his work. His Hirsch-index is 57, the total number of citations to his publications is more than 13,000 (17 July 2011) and he is one of the most highly cited pharmacologists in the world (ISIHighlyCited.com). Pertti J. Neuvonen is distinguished for his groundbreaking work to create better possibilities for clinical drug research, to promote training in pharmacology and to develop the speciality of clinical pharmacology in Finland. He is the founder and director of the Clinical Drug Research Graduate School, which forms an important national resource for education in pharmacology and organizes several postgraduate courses annually. He has supervised 39 PhD doctoral theses and has currently six doctoral students. For his exceptional merits in research education in Finland, Pertti J. Neuvonen has received the Lauri Saxén prize in 1997 and the Maud Kuistila prize in 2003. He was the first chairman of the Finnish Society of Clinical Pharmacology (founded in 1994). Moreover, he is the chief editor of the Finnish textbook in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics (published in 1994, 2002 and 2011) and an editorial board member of four international journals. Since 1998, Pertti J. Neuvonen has been a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.