Winner 2008 – Jacques Glowinski

The ECNP Lifetime Achievement Award was established in 2005 by the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology and is presented biannually in the recognition of an individual who has made innovative and lasting contributions to the area of neuropsychopharmacology on a national and/or international level.

The recipient of the ECNP Lifetime Achievement Award this year is Jacques Glowinski, Professor at Collège de France, Paris. Professor Glowinski has a long and distinguished career as a scientist, as a teacher and as an administrator at high positions. During 2000-2006 he served as President, i.e. Administrateur du Collège de France, one of the most prestigious research institutions in the world. He has numerous national and international honours, for instance Professor Glowinski is Commander of the National Legion d’Honneur. The ECNP Award Jury has recognised his pioneering research on the neurochemistry and function of brain monoamines, and his outstanding leadership in European neuropsychopharma- cology, which has inspired generations of scientists.

Jacques Glowinski received his university diploma at the Institute of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutics in Paris in 1960 and graduated in Natural Sciences in 1968. From 1961-1962 he was associated with the Institut Pasteur and left in 1963 for postdoctoral studies at NIMH in Bethesda, USA. Jacques Glowinski returned to France in 1965, and in 1966 he became director for the newly created group Biochemical Neuropharmacology at Collège de France, as a part of General Neurophysiology under its chair Professor A. Fessard. In 1969 he became Maitre de Recherche at INSERM, and in 1974 Director of an INSERM Unit. In 1982 Jacques Glowinski joined Collège de France as Professor and Chair of Neuropharmacology. He was appointed Vice-President of the Professorial Assembly at Collège de France in 1991 and became its ‘Administrator’ in 2000.

Jacques Glowinski has a research career spanning over more than 40 years. During this period he has carried out pioneering research documented by close to 650 publications in PubMed. Several of the early (1960’s) papers established new technologies in studying brain catecholamine (CA) metabolism, notably by the use of carbon 14-labeled amines. At NIMH Jacques Glowinski, mostly together with Iversen and Axelrod, injected radioactive dopamine (DA) and noradrenaline intraventricularly: another pioneering approach. He showed that tricyclic antidepressants inhibit uptake of noradrenaline, thus laying the foundation for the understanding of the site of action of this class of drugs. He thereby outlined a novel brain dissection method and improved analytical methods, allowing demonstration of regional differences in CA turnover. These studies were performed at a time when most findings were based on the whole brain. Later studies focused on the nigrostriatal DA system, especially the striatal compartments (striasomes versus matrix) and the role of compensatory mechanisms after partial lesioning of nigro-neostriatal DA neurons. These studies have important implications for DA neuronal mechanisms underlying progression of the neurodegenerative events afflicting DA neurons. By the use of biochemical techniques his group was the first to discover and characterise cortical DA neurons in the early 1970’s. This finding is, of course, of major importance for the DA hypothesis of schizophrenia, which until then was focused on the striatal DA system. Later Jacques Glowinski and his group established the important role of neuropeptides in the basal ganglia with emphasis on the role of substance P/tachykinins and their receptors in striatal function. The group also made significant contributions to the role of glial cell (astrocytes) in mechanisms related to neurotoxicity.

Besides his many outstanding scientific achievements, Jacques Glowinski has played a key role as a leader and a role model for generations of scientists. He established a ‘French school of neuropharmacology’, when he returned from NIMH in the mid 1960’s. He fostered a whole generation of first-class neuropharmacologists who today have influential positions in the field. Finally, Jacques Glowinski has made lasting and important contributions to the development of Collège de France.