Since 2016, EUFAS has collaborated with the journal European Addiction Research to present the EUFAS EAR Award to an outstanding scientist in addiction research. The EUFAS EAR Award nomination committee (Antoni Gual [Chair of the Committee], Jørgen G. Bramness, Falk Kiefer, and Anneke Goudriaan) has suggested that the EUFAS EAR Award 2021 be awarded to Professor Anne Lingford-Hughes. She is Professor of Addiction Biology and Head of the Division of Psychiatry at Imperial College London and a Consultant Psychiatrist at Central North West London, NHS Foundation Trust. She leads an MRC-funded PhD programme (the MRC Addiction Research Clinical Training Programme – MARC) to produce future clinical addiction academic leaders in the UK. The nomination was endorsed by the Executive Committee of EUFAS and the EAR, and has been presented during the annual conference of the Society for the Study of Addiction, held online on November 4–5, 2021.
Professor Anne Lingford-Hughes is awarded the EUFAS EAR price 2021 for her outstanding contributions to European addiction research. Her research expertise is widely recognized internationally and has had a major impact with the use of positron emission tomography (PET) and fMRI to characterize the dopamine, opioid, GABA-benzodiazepine, GABA-B, NK1 receptor systems in a range of substance addictions including alcoholism and cocaine and opiate dependence. Her research is focused on using neuroimaging and pharmacological and behavioral challenges to characterize the neurobiology of addiction to alcohol, opiate, cocaine, gambling, and nicotine. This body of research aims to improve treatment by research into psychopharmacological interventions, for example in recent projects, through assessing brain responses during methadone detoxification and early abstinence and their modulation by NK1 antagonism, assessing brain responses to baclofen in alcohol use disorder, and investigating the role of ketamine as adjunctive therapy for treatment in alcohol use disorder.
Through her numerous publications (>150) in international referee-based journals of the highest quality, Lingford-Hughes has contributed substantially to European addiction research, in both basic and applied addiction research. In addition, she co-developed and wrote guidelines of pharmacological management of substance use disorder and contributed to NICE guidance on pharmacotherapy of opiate detoxification and alcohol use disorders.
Prof. Lingford-Hughes is past Hon. General Secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology and currently Professional Liaison Officer of the British Neuroscience Association, and immediate past Chair of the Academic Faculty of RCPsych.
Former Recipients of the EUFAS EAR Award
2016 Professor Karl Mann
2017 Professor Jürgen Rehm
2018 Professor Wim van den Brink
2019 Professor John Strang
2020 Professor Marta Torrens
2021 Professor Anne Lingford-Hughes