2021 10th Annual James Heavner Basic Science Lectureship Award: Tony L. Yaksh, Ph.D 

Tony L. Yaksh obtained his Ph.D. degree from Purdue University (1971).  He served in the U.S. Army (Captain / Cmlc) in the Biomedical Laboratory at Edgewood Arsenal, MD (1971-73), was a research scientist in the School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin (1973-76) and an Associate Research Scientist in Anatomy at University College London with Pat Wall (1976-77). He worked at the Mayo Clinic with Dr. Frederick Kerr in Rochester, MN in Pharmacology and Neurosurgery (1977-1988), where he rose to the rank of Consultant and Professor.  Dr. Yaksh joined University of California San Diego in 1988 as Professor and Vice Chairman for Research in the Department of Anesthesiology, and Professor in the Department of Pharmacology. 

His research has been on the biology of pain processing. This work  has provided a basis for understanding the pharmacology of the spinal and dorsal root ganglion gating of pain information.  He is an expert in spinal drug kinetics and evaluation of spinal drug safety  and  has published more than 850 papers and edited 6 texts.  His work has garnered over 53,000 citations in over 31,000 papers. He has been a mentor to more than 150 postdoctoral fellows and trainees. He has been funded consistently by NIH since 1977 and has twice  been a Javitz Award recipient  from NIH. 

Dr. Yaksh has received several honors, including the Kerr Award from the American Pain Society, the Seldon Memorial Lecturer award from the International Anesthesia Research Society, the American Society of Anesthesiologists award for Excellence in Research and the FAER-Helrich lectureship, the Torsten Gordh lecturer award from the Swedish Society of Medicine, the Bonica Award from the International Association for the Study of Pain, and  lifetime achievement/service  awards from the North American Neuromodulation Society and from European Society of Regional Anesthesia.