Winner 2017: Michel Hamon, France

Michel Hamon is honorary Professor of Neuropharmacology at the University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, and honorary Director of research at the French Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM).  He has been at the centre of European serotonin research for forty years. His pioneering studies on these receptors and their functional implications have led to major advances in our understanding of sleep regulation, anxiety, alcohol dependence, pain, and associated depression-like behaviours.

Michel Hamon began his career with a PhD on biochemical regulatory mechanisms of 5-HT synthesis under Jacques Glowinski at the Collège de France, with important work quickly following on 5-HT-acting drugs (LSD, methiothepin, metergoline, quipazine, azapirones, SSRIs and others) and their effects on central neurotransmission.

 In recognition of his decades of ground-breaking research on the characterisation of serotonin and its receptors, he is this year’s recipient of the ECNP Neuropsychopharmacology Award.

View the press release.
Read here the in-depth interview Michel Hamon gave to ECNP.