Pharmaceutical awards honour UBC team

Vancouver, BC – Canadian Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences (CSPS) Awards for 2013 have been awarded to a team of scientists at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Faculty members Drs. John McNeill and Kishor Wasan, graduate student Andrea Wan and adjunct professor Dr. Ellen Wasan, have all been honoured with awards.

Dr. McNeill, professor and dean emeritus, has been awarded the CSPS Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognizes his significant contributions to pharmaceutical sciences research. He joined the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1971, served as dean from 1985 to 1996, and is the author of more than 400 manuscripts, over 500 abstracts, five books and has received numerous awards for teaching and research over the course of his career.

Dr. Wasan, professor and associate dean, research & graduate studies, has received a CSPS Fellow Award. In the 17 years that Dr. Wasan has been an independent researcher at UBC, he has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and 240 abstracts in the area of lipid-based drug delivery and lipoprotein-drug interaction. He is a University Distinguished Scholar, CIHR/ICO Therapeutics Research Chair in Drug Delivery for Neglected Global Diseases and is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. In May 2011, he was also awarded the CSPS Leadership Award for outstanding contributions to Pharmaceutical Sciences in Canada.

Graduate student Andrea Wan, from the lab of Dr. Brian Rodrigues, has been awarded the CSPS 2013 National Summer Student Research Program Award sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline Inc.

Dr. Ellen Wasan is a recipient of the 2013 Gattefossé Canada CSPS Award in LipidBased Drug Delivery for her work on the paper A Novel Tropically Stable Oral Amphotericin B Formulation (iCo010) Exhibits Efficacy against Visceral Leishmaniasis in a Murine Model, published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

“The faculty is very proud of our award recipients,” says Dr. Wayne Riggs, professor and dean pro tem, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. “These awards are a testament to the outstanding contributions of our Faculty members to the field of pharmaceutical sciences.”