Nauta Award Goes To Philip Portoghese

Philip S. Portoghese, of the department of medicinal chemistry at the University of Minnesota and editor-in-chief of ACS's Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, is the recipient of the 2006 Nauta Award in Pharmacochemistry, the highest recognition presented by the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry.

The award, which recognizes outstanding achievements in the field of medicinal chemistry, was presented at the International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry in Istanbul, Turkey, in August.

Portoghese was the first to propose the existence of multiple opioid receptors from analysis of the structure-activity relationship of analgesics. Over the years, his group has designed and synthesized numerous ligands that are employed widely as research tools.